


Empty Nest

by livenudebigfoot



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Big Bang Challenge, Interior Decorating, M/M, POV Harold Finch, Post-Canon, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:55:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 35,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27731143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livenudebigfoot/pseuds/livenudebigfoot
Summary: One year after the death of Samaritan, Harold Finch returns to New York City and reunites with his old friends. Sameen Shaw and Lionel Fusco, who have believed him to be dead for the past 12 months, are not exactly eager to trust him again. As Harold handles mysterious cases on the outside of their new organization, he works to repair his relationships with both. Sameen, who doubts his commitment, will be hard to convince. Lionel, who bears deep emotional scars, will be impossible.
Relationships: Harold Finch/Lionel Fusco
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21
Collections: Person of Interest Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Enormous thanks to Souhashi for creating the gorgeous art featured in this piece and to st-aurafina for being an awesome mod!

He’s been sleeping for a long time, so when he quarter-turns and sees the lights of New York City glittering and winking in the dark below his window, it feels like a strange, beautiful dream.

His mouth is dry.

His suit is rumpled.

His ticket is one-way.

As he rolls his single suitcase out of JFK, chewing gum to soothe the changing pressure in his ears, it feels altogether less dreamlike. He smells gasoline and hot, wet concrete. Over the roar of departing planes, he hears sirens.

For the first time in a very long time, he thinks the words “I’m home,” and they make him shiver. There is no one here to pick him up, no one he can call to come get him, so he hails a cab. He sits in the backseat, his forehead pressed to the cool glass, his glasses smushed against his face, watching blurred street lights and signs and storefronts slide past him, becoming ever more familiar. 

“I’m home,” he murmurs to himself. His eyes slide shut. His heart is thudding.

* * *

For the first night, he can’t really sleep. Not that Rome was so peaceful, but since his feet hit the ground, there’s been a nervous energy to him, a wanting. He paces the pristine floors of his nearly empty kitchen, sipping tea made with water he had to heat in a pan on the stove.

A kettle soon. One thing at a time.

It would be ideal to go to Miss Shaw first. She will be angry, he thinks, insofar as Sameen can be anything. But he thinks she might understand. 

His opinion of Detective Fusco has grown and twisted over the years, so much so that he can’t quite parse it anymore, but if he learned anything of him in the final few months of their association, it is that Lionel will never understand.

Sameen will have melted into the crowd by now, will have changed her name twenty times over. Who knows if she’s in New York anymore, if she’s even in this country. 

He  _ would  _ know, except after he left for Italy, he stopped keeping tabs. He couldn’t bear to look.

When he finally found the courage, she was gone.

Lionel, however, remained exactly where he was.

Dependable, he thinks, cross-legged on the floor, sipping meditatively at his tea. They will bring his furniture tonight. One thing at a time.

He drains the mug and struggles to his feet. It will have to be Lionel first, then. Lionel can lead him to Sameen. He must know where she is. They’re all each other has.  _ They were, _ he amends,  _ all each other had. _

Unzipping the garment bag hooked over his bedroom door, he surveys his options, shirts and ties and jackets and trousers. Pocket squares and brogues. What would ordinarily soothe him makes him nervous, makes him second-guess. It shouldn’t matter; it’s not as if Lionel ever noticed what he wore, ever cared one way or the other, would notice if he clashed horrendously. It’s only that he’s trying to cultivate an image.

He wants to look like someone forgivable.

Lionel, he reminds himself, feverishly, is forgiving. He may not understand, but he might forgive.

He has to knot and re-knot his tie three times. His fingers are shaking.


	2. Chapter 2

He’s been to the precinct to see Lionel a time or two. He’s never felt this way; he’s never felt blood thrumming in his fingertips, in his throat, quite like this. He supposes he’s excited.

He hasn’t met a friend for a while. 

But Lionel isn’t there. He asks a passing uniformed officer if this is still Detective Fusco’s desk and do you know when he’ll be back and no, no need to take a message for him and yes, yes I’ll wait.

He does wait. He pulls an uncomfortable plastic chair over by the desk and he sits there with his hands folded, his ankles crossed, his face patient. Out of boredom, he examines the topography of Lionel’s desk and finds it in a state of comforting disorder, rustling patches of paper, rolling hills of tangled cords, a faint scattering of crumbs and coffee stains. Lionel keeps a password written on a post-it note that he sticks to the underside of his keyboard. Not the password to log into the computer - he checks. There’s a school photograph of Lionel’s son - it must be from this year, he thinks, the boy wasn’t that tall before - and the bobblehead shaped like a 1950’s policeman, the one with the spy camera embedded in it. He lost access to that camera in the move and hasn’t tried to regain it. Seeing it still here, just a knick knack again, makes his chest hurt.

It all looks very much the way it did the last time he saw it.

And perhaps that’s a good sign. Perhaps that’s a sign that he hasn’t wounded Lionel too badly.

He waits. He waits a long time, until he’s reminding himself that it’s not as though Lionel’s difficult to contact. Lionel hasn’t even changed phone numbers. He’s moved apartments since they last spoke, but he already knows the address of the new one. There’s no need to meet him here.

But it would be wrong, wouldn’t it, to reappear over the phone or to surprise Lionel at home. And there would have been something comforting about finding him at work here, grumbling gently in his chair. It would have felt as though they could pick up right where they left off.

Perhaps they might.

He waits. He wonders if during the hours and hours he spent plucking Lionel unexpectedly from his desk and dropping him into grave danger, there were others who sat here too, waiting, wondering what he could be doing. The light outside must be dimming, vivid orange and soft gray, but here it is all fluorescence and low green desk lamps. He crosses, recrosses his legs. He is distracted momentarily by the vibrancy of his own sock; though the suit he chose is gray, the socks are argyle in unexpected colors. He thinks suddenly that Lionel will hate him for this, for being alive, sitting by his desk in bright socks, instead of being dead. Ridiculous. Lionel would never notice his socks. He waits. His lower back aches.

When Lionel appears, it is at a distance, through an open doorway and with passersby between them, adding the benefit of cover. He is laughing. The man Lionel is speaking to - his partner now, the new one - has said something to make him laugh. He looks so healthy, so genuine.

Harold should go. He should leave right now. He rises from the plastic chair thinking perhaps he can slip away unnoticed but he’s frozen, watching. Lionel’s hand is on his new partner’s shoulder. His head is turning. He is turning to see who is standing by his desk.

For one odd, fragile little moment, there is no recognition. To Lionel, Harold is just another problem waiting to be solved.

Then Lionel’s face changes.

_ I should go. _

He has seen Lionel shot a few times, seen him very badly hurt, and there was always a sturdiness to him, a plasticity. There was always the impression that this was just one more punch he could roll with.

This seems to have taken all the air out of him.

Lionel moves toward him.

_ I should go, _ he thinks again.  _ Perhaps I should run. _ But he’s frozen there, planted, trying to find an apology or an explanation. Something to fix this. But there’s nothing, there’s a dry well and a frozen body that couldn’t run if it wanted to and there is Lionel bearing down on him with an unreadable face.

And then Lionel seizes him indelicately, Lionel crushes him to his chest, and the half-expected slam to the floor never comes. Lionel’s face presses deep in his shoulder, shuddering breath heating the breast of his coat and he doesn’t, he can’t know what to do. He feels himself lifted very slightly, his back twinging in alarm.

“I thought you were dead,” Lionel growls, muffled, into his shoulder. “You son of a bitch, I was so sure you were dead.”

Slowly, haltingly, Harold lets his arms wrap around Lionel’s broad shoulders, his hands pat cautiously at Lionel’s back. “I’m not,” he says, because he can’t think of anything useful or clever to say. “I know. I’m not.”

_ Please put me down, _ he doesn’t say, even though this is all a bit taxing. It’s just a relief to be welcomed, a curious relief to be touched at all.

Lionel’s back jumps beneath Harold’s palm with a sudden breath. An unspent sob.


	3. Chapter 3

Lionel recovers admirably, quietly. By the time his head lifts from Harold’s shoulder, he has nearly blinked away whatever immense, terrifying emotion swept over him a moment before. Within seconds, he is himself again, cheerfully introducing Harold to his new partner as an old friend he hasn’t seen in a long time, somebody he has to catch up with right away, and he’d seem completely normal if Harold couldn’t feel Lionel’s hand tight at his elbow, growing ever tighter. 

Outside of the precinct, he doesn’t speak to Harold, doesn’t look at him. From his breast pocket he produces a flip phone, a cheap burner.

“This must come as a shock to you,” Harold murmurs, half-cautious, half-prodding. The reaction seems wrong, not quite what he expected.

Lionel ignores him, texts with trembling fingers. After a moment, a buzz from the phone, he nods and says, “She’ll meet us.” He folds the phone and puts it inside his coat again. He still hasn’t made eye contact with Harold. “I’m parked around the corner.” He starts down the sidewalk too quickly, yanking at Harold’s arm for just a second before his conscience makes him slow down.

In the car, Harold studies his face. Lionel remains a stony profile, eyes front. Harold thinks perhaps there are a few new lines on his face, perhaps his color is better, perhaps he’s better off, perhaps he’s worse off. He hasn’t called Harold “Glasses” yet, not even once. He hasn’t called Harold anything, except for “son of a bitch”. Lionel drives just a little too fast and brakes hard at red lights. 

Harold shifts in the passenger seat, trying to think of anything to say. “Are you alright?” he doesn’t allow himself to ask. Lionel isn’t alright. That’s obvious.

They’re stalled at a long light, Lionel nervously drumming his hands on the wheel in time with the rain drumming on the roof of the car when he asks without looking, “Where the hell have you been?” 

_ Italy, mainly, _ Harold thinks.  _ A hospital here in the city, for a brief time. _ Harold’s not sure which part of that answer would make him angrier. He’s not even sure what lie he could tell to make Lionel welcome him back wholeheartedly.  _ Prison _ . That would be received kindly.  _ Amnesia. I walked the earth in a blur, not knowing who I was or where my friends were.  _

_ I was dead. _

“Perhaps I should wait until Miss Shaw is with us,” he says, deferring, delaying.

A soft, nasty laugh. “Yeah, sure,” he says. “Why waste your breath explaining it twice? Don’t strain yourself. Listen,” and he turns his head and he looks Harold in the eye and he startles, as though he hadn’t expected Harold to really be there. He sighs. “Enlighten me, huh?”

“I…” Harold hesitates, momentarily arrested by how tired Lionel’s eyes are, how clear and nearly colorless, how sad. “I can’t…” His voice crumples and dies in the back of his throat. 

Lionel exhales through his nose, slow, controlled. Crushing his anger down. “Sure,” he says. “What else is new?” The light turns green and Lionel stomps on the gas. “And what about the other guy? Is he gonna show up out of the blue? Where’s he been, fucking Aruba?”

Harold must make a sound. A gasp, perhaps, or a sudden inhalation, because Lionel’s face changes. As if he suspects, but he’s frightened to know for sure. 

Better to remove ambiguity as quickly as possible. “No,” Harold tells him.

Lionel closes his eyes, just for an instant. His thick fingers tighten on the wheel. Then he keeps driving, eyes front, breath even. A hairline crack seems to slide through him, split him, but his lip doesn’t even quiver.

Harold sinks into his seat. Shame creeps over him, down his back and through his belly. He knows it would be unwise to reach out and touch him, to say “I’m sorry”, to do anything by way of comfort. But he finds that he’d like to.

He projects his apology silently, while staring out the wet, blurry windshield. He thinks it will be more comfortable this way.

He knows that Lionel was fonder of John.

Lionel carves out a parking space on a street where there doesn’t seem to be room for one. He bends double and gropes, swearing, beneath the car seat until Harold taps him on the shoulder and shows him the compact umbrella he keeps in his bag for just such occasions. There’s a certain sort of person that likes to pretend they don’t need an umbrella, Harold reflects as Lionel sprints around the car to open the door for him. As though their stoicism will keep them dry. Days like this, he thinks as he gingerly unfolds the umbrella over Lionel’s head, tend to lay bare the lie.

Lionel stays close by his side as they walk into the gray gloom along the waterfront. He takes Harold by the elbow as they step up to the wet curb and he murmurs into Lionel’s ear, “I’m not quite so doddering as that.”

“Just so you don’t fall,” Lionel reprimands. “Slippery out here.”

The Hudson is its ugliest self, gray and brown and swelling. Soda cans and shopping bags rise up in swirling eddies, only to be swallowed back down.

He has missed it, in its way.

“Not that I mind the walk,” he says, although his socks are wet and he does, a bit, “but what are we doing out here, Detective?”

Shoulders drawn up around his ears, he says, “This is where we go when Shaw and I gotta meet with a third party.” 

He won’t pretend to himself that being called a third party doesn’t sting. “A little public, isn’t it?”

“Only if the third party’s in some kinda trouble.” He nudges Harold gently with the bulk of his shoulder. “You in trouble, Finch?”

He considers this, carefully. “No. None at all. I don’t know if I’ve been in as little trouble as this since I was...perhaps since I was 17.”

Lionel blinks up at him, quizzically.

Harold explains: “I started early.”

She materializes in the rain, a small and dark shape striding purposefully down the waterfront, leaning into the wind. No umbrella in sight. Typical. 

Bear trots at her side, faithful even in foul weather. He seems to register Lionel’s presence immediately, easy and familiar, with a lolling tongue and a bounce in his gait. 

That steady gait falters when Bear sees Harold. He comes to a stop, rain slicking his dark fur. His tail twitches ever so slightly. All at once, he gallops, passing Shaw, tearing through puddles and barreling headlong into Harold’s chest. Harold throws his arms around the dog, holds Bear’s soaked, wiggling body in his arms for a fearful, glorious moment before he starts to tip backwards.

Lionel catches them both, seizes Harold by the upper arms and holds him upright, pressing his chest against Harold’s back to steady them. Pushing at Bear’s chest, he snaps, “Bear!  _ Foei! Af! _ Come on, guy.”

“It’s alright, Detective,” Harold says as Bear shoves his face against Harold’s and licks his cheek with a long pink tongue. “I missed him too.”

Faintly chastened and cautiously satisfied that Bear won’t knock Harold off his feet, Lionel gives him a gentle squeeze on the arm and releases him. “Lemme take the umbrella, at least.”

Harold passes it to him hastily and devotes himself to the task of absorbing Bear’s greeting.

“Weather sucks,” Sameen says over the roar of the rain. And then, to Harold, “You’re back.”

“Get under here, dummy,” Lionel grumbles, tilting the umbrella so it covers her just a little. “Catch your death out here.”

She steps into their little dry circle and now they’re all standing far too close together, with Harold’s glasses fogging up and the dog crushed between their legs, still wiggling with joy. 

She asks him, “Where were you?”

Harold swipes a hand across his cheek and pushes Bear away. He opens his mouth, tries to determine where to begin, closes his mouth again.

“You’re OK?” she asks. “You’re not hurt?”

“No. Not anymore. At the time...” And then he catches Lionel’s sidelong glance, the worry in his brow. “But I’ve made a full recovery.”

“Nobody kidnapped you?” she continues. “You didn’t get sent to prison?”

“No,” he says. “No, nothing like that.”

Sameen thinks to herself for a while, as though reviewing some kind of mental checklist. All at once, so fast he can scarcely see it coming, she strikes him across the face with the flat of her palm.

Lionel throws the umbrella to the ground and shoves himself between Sameen and Harold, a stocky and soaking barrier. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he snarls in Sameen’s face

“If you were in prison,” she says to Harold over Lionel’s shoulder, as calm and emotionless as if they were speaking over coffee, “or if you’d been kidnapped, I would've let you off the hook.”

Lionel grabs her by the arm. “We gotta talk.”

“I’m done,” she mutters to Lionel. “I’m not gonna hit him again. I’m done.”

But she allows Lionel to half-guide, half-drag her down the waterfront until the two of them out of earshot, drowned out by the patter of the rain.

Or they would be, had he not already cloned Lionel’s work phone. 

Perhaps not the most honest way to rekindle the association, Harold reflects. But he is fretful and he worries and he cannot be expected to let Lionel roam around without backup for a second longer. As rain drenches his coat and spills over the brim of his hat, Harold takes the earpiece from his pocket and tucks it surreptitiously into his ear. 

“-- so whipped,” Shaw’s saying.

Lionel interrupts, hushed and furious. “You can’t do that to him! His neck’s fucked up.”

“I only slapped him,” she says. 

“What if he fell?”

“You would’ve caught him.”

“ _ That _ ,” Lionel snaps, “is a lot of pressure. And I don’t need it.”

This seems to get through to Sameen. The division of labor, the politics of who is asked to carry what. She falls silent. Perhaps contrite.

“Can I give you a head’s up?” she asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, a little advance warning would be nice.”

She says, “His excuse isn’t gonna make any sense.”

Lionel inhales, exhales, deep and ragged. “What?” he asks at last.

“Finch’s reason for being gone. If Finch had a good excuse, if he couldn’t find a way to tell us he was alive, he would’ve told us right away. Which means it’s either something stupid, which is gonna piss you off, or it’s something secret, which is gonna piss you off more.”

A soft intake of breath. “Yeah.” Lionel sounds resigned.

Further down the waterfront, Harold sinks into a crouch and takes Bear's head in his hands. "Good boy," he murmurs.

“It’s gonna piss us both off,” Sameen's saying. “You’re gonna want to punch him in the face.”

“I don’t wanna punch him in the face.”

“At least I got it out of my system.”

“I don’t want to punch him,” Lionel repeats. “I’m pissed off, but I don’t…” he trails off, a thin puff of air. “John’s dead,” he says, finally.

She makes a small sound, suppressed and certain. She knew this already. Perhaps they both did. “What does he want?” she asks.

“He hasn’t said yet.” 

“Better go ask him,” she says. “You need a second to get your shit together?”

“My shit’s together,” Lionel answers. “Just don’t haul off and punch anybody.”

“I told you,” she says as they turn and move back up the waterfront. “It’s out of my system.” 

Harold rises from his crouch as they approach, lifting the umbrella to accommodate them.

“I’m not sorry I hit you,” Sameen tells him. “But it’s good you’re alive.”

Harold nods as graciously as he’s able. “I understand, Miss Shaw. I’ve returned to you with far more questions than answers and I don’t have the kind of explanation you need.”

They stand silent, soaked, bitter. 

At last, Harold begins: “I will try to clarify where I can.”


	4. Chapter 4

He uses an Exacto knife to open the box and free his new kettle. It’s an item selected in haste and he feels no particular love for it as he unwraps it, letting the foam packaging fall to the floor. It is the sort of thing - sleek yet classic - that ought to appeal to him, yet he finds no satisfaction in its weight.

He supposes the reunion could have gone better. He amends: the reunion with Lionel could have gone better. Sameen was kinder than expected.

Perhaps not kind, Harold reflects, ruminating on the warmth of his swollen cheek. But understanding, particularly after the slap. She listened with silent interest, digging into him only gently. 

Throughout the conversation, Lionel seemed to crumble, to sink into himself until his head was resting in his hands. Harold could only tell he was listening by the unsteady clouds of his breath, the heave of his shoulders.

When Harold told them how he had last seen John, standing on the rooftop, smiling weakly, Lionel stepped out from under the umbrella, as though he couldn’t bear to share that space. He stood there in the rain for the rest of the story, about how Harold dragged himself down the stairs, about how Harold checked himself into a hospital, about how Harold slipped away into parts unknown.

He told them that if they were still working together, if they were still finding ways to protect people, he wanted to offer his services. He wanted to help. Sameen said they’d think about it.

Lionel couldn’t bear to look at him. 

Harold called himself a taxi not long after that.

 _He’ll be fine_ , Harold reassures himself. Lionel has that curious strength to him. Harold’s fussing would only be burdensome.

Harold fills the new kettle with cool water, puts it on the stove. He turns his attention to the bedroom. To his bare mattress. To his new linen sheets. Making the bed is a laborious, hated chore, and one he’s grown out of practice with after months of living in hotels. He sprawls face down over the mattress, dragging the fitted sheet, and he thinks again, _He’ll be fine._

He has, perhaps, overestimated what Lionel will put up with in the name of loyalty. He has perhaps asked too much. Lionel may not look at him with affection, not for a long while. But he’ll be fine. _He’ll be fine_ , Harold repeats.

He's folding over the corner of a sheet when he says aloud, “It couldn’t hurt, could it?”

He’s repulsed momentarily by the sound of his own voice, plaintive and desperate for validation, as it echoes through his empty apartment.

It couldn’t _hurt_. 

He thinks perhaps he’ll just ping Lionel’s location. In the interest of safety. No listening; it would only be a balm to Harold’s nerves to see that Lionel was safely at home or at the precinct, burning the hours away or perhaps en route between the two. And perhaps if he’s close by - _and why would he be close by?_ \- Harold might...Harold might go find him. Speak to him. Explain himself. Or...better not. He already has and Lionel doesn’t want to hear any more tonight. 

Perhaps he might hold Lionel by the wrist again. Perhaps Lionel might permit that.

The location is not one he recognizes. He has to Google the name. It’s a bar. Harold touches his brow.

Not his business. Not his responsibility. His interference would not be appreciated, would not be wanted. For all he knows, Lionel is cheerfully drinking seltzer with friends.

Except he would not be cheerful, on a night like tonight.

_Not your business._

Harold turns off the stove, takes his still-wet coat from the rack. Forgets to turn out the light. He’s too busy calling a car. 

* * *

The bar, he knows by now, is an old cop bar. Lionel probably went here before they met, maybe a little after. Maybe still. _Maybe he just drinks now, you awful busybody._

Harold stands outside the doors, letting the neon signs from the windows play over the lenses of his glasses. What he would like is for Lionel to come out now, stone-cold sober and ready to forgive. He would like to discover that some other detective has picked up Lionel’s phone by mistake and that Lionel is safe at home.

He balls his fists up in his coat for a quiet, fearful moment, and then pushes the door open. 

He’s reminded, oddly, of the bars in his hometown. Not that he ever spent much time there, but it's something about the music, the dark and boozy closeness, the sense of everybody knowing everybody and nobody knowing him. Harold shakes off the memory and focuses on finding Lionel.

He’s spent more time than he’d like to admit tracking Lionel’s movements outside of work and Harold’s instinct is always to search groups. A safe little cluster of friends. Lionel can’t be without company, and if he is, he’ll start befriending strangers, animals, the walls. 

Which is why it’s so terrible to find him tucked away in the shadows at the farthest end of the bar, utterly alone. Lionel’s hunched low over his glass. He seems to still be crumbling.

Harold lifts himself onto the stool beside him. He settles, folds his hands on the damp bar. He waits patiently until Lionel moans, “Goddammit, not you.”

An inauspicious beginning. “I suppose you mind, then,” Harold begins, “if I sit with you.”

“Yeah,” Lionel says. “Yeah, I mind. I think you better just turn around and go back to wherever you came from ‘cause…”

“I don’t think,” Harold interrupts, “that you should be alone tonight.”

Lionel lets out a sharp, dry bark of laughter. “Listen, you are the last person...”

“I’m the _only_ person,” Harold says softly.

Lionel winces. Harold almost does too, at himself. For a second, he wishes for a crowd of people, the type who grab shoulders and slap backs and buy rounds and call you _buddy_. The type Harold very much is not.

“Lionel, I would like to sit and drink with you. As company. If you’ll have me.”

He must be very tired, Harold thinks, to even consider it. Tired and starved for companionship. Lionel clears his muddy throat. “I don’t want to hear from you about how I shouldn’t be here,” he murmurs.

Harold nods to him. “I can do that.”

“And I don’t wanna hear any excuses from you. About...fuckin’...anything.”

Harold’s almost relieved. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Lionel sighs deeply, beckons the bartender over. “Same as me,” he says, jabbing a thumb in Harold’s direction.

“Same as Lionel” is bourbon and soda. Harold’s preference is for wine, and his time in Italy has deepened his palate. Made him snobbish, Harold supposes. The bourbon is cheap and it burns him, antiseptic and raw. Still, Harold sips at it gamely, feels it numbing the dull ache in his face.

“This was your drink of choice?” he asks, turning the glass in his fingers. “Before?”

“Yeah.” Lionel sounds almost wistful. “Yeah, it was.”

“Not with _this_ bourbon, I hope.”

He snorts. “I never was choosy about that kind of thing. But Jesus Christ, not this bourbon.”

“And this bar,” Harold says, thoughtfully, “was not your bar of choice.”

“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock.” Lionel takes a serious sip of the very bad bourbon.

It isn’t a deduction at all. Harold has known Lionel’s haunts and habits for longer than he’s known Lionel himself. The bar from before - O’Hara’s, Harold recalls with sudden clarity - was part of the early dossier. It slipped off the schedule early on, replaced with weekly meetings in a church basement. “How long,” Harold asks, “has this been your bar of choice?”

Lionel shoots him a sidelong glance. “You’re on thin ice, you know.”

“Am I?” he asks. 

“Afraid so,” he says. “But I’ll play ball. Only been here two hours. Maybe three. I haven’t been...It’s a one night only thing. That’s all.”

“One night only?” Harold repeats.

“I, um…” He hesitates, hiccups near-silently. “I spent this past year doing a lot of thinking. Wondering, I guess. And worrying. Lost a lot of sleep. But now...I know now. I know you’re alive. And I know he’s dead.” He raises his glass, drains it dry, and slams it empty on the bar. “Mystery solved.” 

There is a new iciness to him, and an uprightness too.

“I had hoped,” Harold tries, “it might bring you a modicum of peace. To know the truth.”

“What would’ve brought me peace,” Lionel snaps as he pushes his empty glass into the bartender’s waiting hands, “is if you told me the truth a year ago. And I would’ve hoped you’d have enough respect to stop lying to me. For fucking _once_.”

Silently, Harold sips his very bad bourbon and stares straight ahead. He thinks Lionel may be looking at him, directly at him, and for the first time tonight he finds that notion unbearable.

“Dumb of me, maybe,” Lionel says. His voice has become the dangerous kind of quiet. “Always kinda figured you saw me as a flunkie. You know, don’t trust him with too much and if he gets shot, it’s no big deal…”

“Oh, _no_ ,” Harold murmurs, too softly.

“But I kinda figured you for a friend too, in your way. Kind of a snob, kind of an asshole, but a friend all the same. You’re in my phone, still, you know,” he says, suddenly. “Both of you. Never really had the heart to delete those numbers. Oughta…” He fumbles at his jacket pocket. “Oughta take care of those now. Won’t be needing ‘em.”

“Oh, _Lionel_ , no.” Harold seizes his wrist. 

Lionel freezes in his grip and Harold wonders if he’s about to be hit or shoved or abandoned at this bar. None of those things happen. When he finds the courage to meet Lionel’s gaze, his eyes rimmed in red. 

“You know, John and me,” Lionel’s saying, “we, uh, tried to off each other a couple of times. Dunno how serious he was about it, but I was _damn_ serious about it, those first couple months.” The emotion on his face is unidentifiable: dreamy and furious and hopelessly sad. “He shot me in the back - for real, I mean - about five times. And he ended up being a better friend to me than you are right now.”

Harold releases Lionel’s wrist. He folds his hands shamefully on the bar once more. “John always took to friendship more easily than I did.”

“John wasn’t…” Lionel says suddenly. “Wasn’t like...a social guy. Never went to bars with the rest of us at the 8th. Never got him to go bowling what with...everything. But he liked people.” He spares a glance at Harold, as though looking for corroboration.

At a loss, Harold nods.

“You remember when I went to go get him?” Lionel asks. “In Colorado?”

Harold remembers.

“He was holed up at his dad’s bar. And he wanted me to have a drink with him. I, uh, I didn’t. I was two years sober. I showed him my chip, and he...I dunno. Dunno if he cared. But I didn’t drink with him and I was kinda proud of that, at the time.” His drink returns, replenished. He blinks at it, slightly surprised. “Wish I’d done it now,” he says, as he curls his fingers around the glass again. “Woulda been good to drink with him once.”

“He must have been proud of you,” Harold says. “Perhaps not in the moment, but…”

Lionel laughs loud and harsh, in a way that reminds Harold that with one thing and another, he had never bothered to ask what happened with the two of them in Colorado. “Not in the moment,” Lionel says, with a sigh. “No, not in the moment.”

“By the end,” Harold insists. “By the end, he must have been. I could see how proud he was of you, of who you became. Because, all on your own, you were so much better than he ever could have forced you to be.” He rests his palm against Lionel’s broad shoulder, feels the drunk heat of him seep through the jacket. “Lionel, he was so fond of you.”

Lionel presses his mouth against his palm as though stifling a scream. He leans there, elbows on the bar, eyes damp. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he says, muffled. “You think I don’t have enough problems?”

“Lionel…”

“No.” He swats Harold’s hand away. “No. You know what? Believe it or not, I was getting by. I don’t want you thinking this whole thing - this whole _lying_ thing - wasn’t that bad because it was _that bad_ , but before you showed up, things were OK. Not perfect but, you know, I get to see my kid every day and I might be up for a promotion soon -”

“Congratulations,” Harold says, numbly.

“My life…” Lionel’s voice buckles. He grips the edge of the bar. “It’s better than it was before you showed up. You and John. And I owe you for that.” He clears his throat, blinks. “But I wish to hell that if you had to disappear on me the way you did, you would’ve stayed gone.”

Harold sits perfectly still, feeling as though he’s been slapped for the second time today. Physically, there’s no pain, of course, but he seems to feel this more keenly.

“Anything to say for yourself?” Lionel asks. He takes a sip of his bourbon and soda, seems to enjoy it less than he expects to.

Harold can feel himself trembling. Trembling like he could fall off the barstool. “Split a cab?” he says, finally.

“Jesus,” Lionel says. “Of course not.”

“Separate cabs, then? I understand you don’t want to be sermonized at,” Harold says in reply to Lionel’s disdainful snort. “If nothing else, I understand that. But I’d like to know you arrived home safely.”

“Just track my phone,” Lionel says into his glass. “Or whatever it is you do.”

“Isn’t there anyone here I could send you home with?” Harold asks, ignoring a fresh twinge of guilt. “A coworker? A friend? Someone you trust?”

Lionel shakes his head. “Nobody from the 8th comes here.”

 _He came here so nobody from the 8th would see him drink._ Harold’s fingers snag themselves in the sleeve of Lionel’s jacket. “As a favor to me, let me have you driven home.”

“I don’t want to do you any favors.”

“Inconvenience me, then,” Harold says, holding fast to his arm. “Stay at my apartment for the night.”

Lionel laughs, nastily. “You got a line for everything, don’t you?”

Harold’s hands settle gingerly on Lionel’s. “If I’m being persistent, it’s only because I’m worried about what will happen if you’re alone.”

Lionel takes a deep, patient breath. “Buddy,” he begins, “if that were true…”

“Please,” he interrupts. “I know how furious you are with me and I don’t begrudge you that, even a little, but I only want to know that you’re safe.”

Lionel falls silent.

“You don’t need to say another word to me, if you don’t want to,” Harold says. “And I won’t say another word to you, if that’s what it takes to make you leave this bar. Only let me make sure you’re safe.” He looks into Lionel’s soft, worn face, his unfocused eyes. “You must be very tired.”

It must be this that softens him, the notion that he might be allowed to sleep soon. “Your place,” Lionel says, finally. “I don’t want to be drunk at home.”

“Very well.” Harold takes hold of Lionel’s forearms and pulls gently until he slides off the barstool and into Harold’s arms. He exhales, shivering, breath thick and boozy. He sways, silent and defeated, as Harold pays his tab with a small spool of bills. Harold shepherds Lionel outside to the waiting car in silence, opens the door for him and pushes Lionel down just slightly when it seems he might strike his head. 

Lionel curls against the car door and rests his brow against the cold window while Harold asks the driver to take them back, take them home.

“We’re not too far,” Harold tells him as they pull away from the curb.

Lionel shifts, as though trying to burrow his way into the door.

“But you should sleep a little, if you like.”

Lionel groans.

“Will you be sick?” Harold asks, anxiously. Not that the relevant cleaning would be too much to pay for. It’s only that the bourbon isn’t resting easily in him either, and he’d rather not be sick too.

“My fuckin’ chip.” Lionel sounds so small, so tired. “I lost it.”

Harold’s heart sinks. “Sorry?” he asks, too lightly.

“I was coming up on...on six years. Woulda been six years. Oh my god.” His shoulders bow. His hand rakes through his hair.

There’s nothing Harold can say to him. He’s wise enough to know that, at the very least. He just sits there, cold and quiet, stopped up. He thinks he would like to touch him, to run his fingernails up and down Lionel’s back slow and gentle, soothing through his jacket. He thinks Lionel would hate him for that.

His hand hangs suspended, outstretched, an inch above Lionel’s collapsing shoulders. He touches him only with the barest edge of his fingertips. It’s more for Harold’s benefit than it is for Lionel’s. 

“Did you get my tab?” Lionel asks suddenly, thickly, muffled through his hands.

“I did,” Finch says. He lets his hand fall to the seat beside him. 

“Oh my god,” he repeats into his hands. “Oh my god.”


	5. Chapter 5

In the elevator, Harold tries to stop himself from watching. It was easy in the car. Lionel’s breathing was so ragged, so miserable, and Harold thought that if he made eye contact, some terrible floodgate would open, so he spent the ride staring directly into the back of their driver’s head, not daring to look away.

But there are mirrors in the elevator, and it is all too simple to steal glances.

Lionel’s eyes are puffy, pink. He is very slightly unsteady on his feet, even standing still. His misery has taken on an air of quiet resignation.

“Will you be alright?” Harold asks him, pretending to be fascinated by the far wall while examining Lionel’s face in the reflection.

His mouth curves, sharp and bitter. “Now he asks.”

There is a clean, bright sound as the elevator doors slide open, and it makes Lionel jump.

“This is my floor,” Harold tells him, permitting his fingertips to graze Lionel’s upper arm and push him forward. “And yes, I am asking.”

Lionel moves slowly, exhaustedly as Harold tugs him through the elevator doors. He takes in his surroundings - the plush carpet, the bright and shimmering fixtures, the eerie muteness of the hallways in Harold’s building - with quiet, bleary disgust.

“I’m alright enough,” he says, finally. “I’m not gonna…” He trails off. Not going to what, Harold wonders. Complain. Fight. Weep. Harm himself, perhaps. The list of things that Lionel isn’t going to do troubles Harold and he pushes it from his mind.

“How long have you been in these digs?” Lionel asks, swaying gently on his feet while Harold fiddles with the lock on his door. Meaning,  _ How long have you been in the city without telling me? How much should I hate you? _

“Not long,” Harold reassures. “Just a day.” The door swings open, revealing the evidence. The box for the kettle is still resting on the kitchen floor. The couch is freshly delivered and has never known pressure. The floor is littered with boxes.

Lionel seems satisfied. He allows Harold to guide him through the door.

“How is your new apartment, Lionel?” Harold asks.

Lionel’s head is craned back, contemplating the height of the ceilings. “S’nice. Safe neighborhood. Only two subway stops from my kid’s school.” As Harold approaches him, Lionel bumps him with one shoulder, barely more than a brush. “You fuckin’...creep.”

Harold curls his hand in the crook of Lionel’s elbow, guides him towards the bedroom. “I wanted to be sure you were well,” he says. “I’m glad. Your previous landlord was lax about security.”

“Coulda just called me,” Lionel says softly.

Harold opens his bedroom door, thinks about turning the light on for a moment before deciding that Lionel might prefer darkness. He ignores the nagging wound. He  _ could  _ have called him.

Lionel murmurs, mockingly, “‘Hey, Lionel. How’ve you been? I’m out of town doing…’” He trails off, blinking and swaying as Harold guides him to a stop beside the bed. “‘...Doing who the fuck knows what. Be back soon. Keep the fuckin’...home fires burning. P.S. John’s dead.’”

Harold gives him a gentle push and Lionel sits down hard on the freshly made bed, nearly topples onto his back. He looks up at Harold, eyes red-rimmed and tired. “Would it have been that hard?” His voice cracks a little. “To let us know where you were? That you were OK?”

Harold sinks slowly, carefully to his knees, feels them twinge as they take his weight. He rests Lionel's foot in his lap and begins tugging at the laces on his shoes. “It wouldn’t have been easy to reach you.”

“But you didn’t try,” Lionel murmurs. His eyes are on his laces.

“No." He slides the shoe off, reshapes it gently in his hands. It’s still warm from Lionel’s foot.

“Did it just...did you just not think of it? Fuckin’...help me out here.”

“No.” Harold tugs off the other shoe. “No, I thought of it.” He sets the pair of them neatly beneath the bed, their scuffed toes peeking out. Lionel has a small hole in the toe of one sock, barely more than a pinprick. “I thought of it every day.

When he looks up, Lionel has his brow furrowed, his mouth twisted bitterly. “And then you didn’t.”

“I didn’t,” Harold confirms. He braces his hand on Lionel’s knee, neatly unclips the tie from his shirt collar. “Would you like to go straight to sleep or take a shower first?”

He shakes his head, shivering. “Better just...just sleep.”

“That’s good,” Harold says softly. “May I help you with your jacket?”

Lionel nods, rolls his shoulders to make it easier.

Lionel’s clothes infuriate him. It’s his own tastes, Harold knows, run wild. He curates his own belongings with an aesthete’s obsessive rigor, a hedonist’s tactile attentions. He likes the feel of fine linens against his skin, the structure of a well-cut suit, the silken hiss of a tie between his fingers. It bothers him to see someone he’s fond of in scratchy, drooping synthetics. He’d replace Lionel’s whole wardrobe in an instant, if he could. He helps Lionel navigate the cuffs of his jacket over his wrists, his big hands. 

For a shameful, greedy moment, he grips one of Lionel’s hands in his own. Warm and rough. Harold lets his fingers roam over callouses, down heart lines and lifelines. He’s not sure which is which, never bothered to learn. He can’t remember what the third one is. Something to do with health or wealth, maybe. He leaves Lionel’s hand alone, sets it gently on the bed, palm down. Lionel is quiet, glassy-eyed, still.

Harold clears his throat. “Would you be more comfortable without your belt?”

Lionel nods. His every move has taken on a slow, dreamy quality, as though he were underwater. Everything is a sluggish fumble for rest. Harold rests fingers on Lionel’s belt buckle, drags the excess belt through the buckle, pulls it tight to unhook the metal tongue from the notch. It’s as Harold is dragging the belt through the loops, as Lionel is lifting his hips, obliging and unasked under Harold’s fingertips, that Lionel murmurs, “You gonna try it, pal?”

Suddenly, it’s a different room, a different bed, and Harold drags a terry cloth belt free from Lionel’s bathrobe and the robe slides lazily open, shows his skin wet and flushed and welcoming, and it almost doesn’t matter because it doesn’t show Harold anything his hands haven’t already touched and then Lionel seizes him by the tie and pulls him  _ down  _ \- 

Harold jerks away, the imitation leather belt in his hands. He’s back in his cold, dark, eerily empty new apartment, but the memory is sharp. It slices deep into him, makes his chest ache, his face hot and something about Lionel’s look, at once suspicious and sly, tells Harold he’s remembering too. The exact same thing.

“I won’t,” Harold says. “I wouldn’t.” He’s breathless. He feels as though he’s been slapped.

“Yeah?” Lionel says. There’s a kind of resignation in his voice. 

Harold rises to his feet slowly, carefully. “Will you sleep now?”

Lionel doesn’t answer, struggles with the buttons on his shirt for a few moments. He manages to undo the top three before giving up, nodding. Harold permits himself to touch Lionel’s upper arm, to tilt him over until he’s lying on his side. Lionel obligingly tucks his feet up into bed, drags the sheet up past his knees before it becomes hopelessly tangled and Harold has to straighten it out.

Harold goes to retrieve a coverless duvet, new in its packaging. He half-hopes that Lionel will be fast asleep by the time he’s done unfurling it and cutting off the tags. When he comes back, Lionel watches him, intent and alarmingly bold. 

“Hey, Finch,” he says. His voice is soft and broken from ill-use but very, very clear. 

Harold drapes the duvet over him and considers pretending he didn’t hear.

Lionel aims an uncoordinated, swaddled kick at Harold’s fussing hands. “Hey.”

“Please try to sleep,” Harold pleads, tucking the duvet around him.

Lionel says, very softly, “Why’d you come back?”

Harold sinks down to sit heavy at the foot of the bed.

“We never…” Lionel begins. “...We asked why you left, but not why…”

The belt hangs loose in Harold’s hands. He presses the buckle between his thumb and his palm and begins to wind it, slowly, around his hand. “I suppose I feel that I have a responsibility here.”

Lionel breathes in and out, thick and sleepy. “Guy’s a romantic.”

“And I missed you, I suppose,” Harold admits. “All of you.”

Lionel’s feet brush against his thigh, blunted and softened by the duvet. “We missed you,” he says softly. “I did. The dog did. It’s kinda hard to tell with Sameen sometimes, but I know she did too.”

Harold’s about to stammer out a thank you, a limp and repetitive “I missed you too”, when Lionel adds, faintly, “Why the hell didn’t that matter?” 

The question floats, awful and spectral, in the dark.

“We all thought you were dead. We were trying to figure all this shit out on our own and we missed you, but you were gone. And I kept thinking like...why’d I fuck that up? Why’d I let him go before I said what I needed to say? What the hell is wrong with me that I didn’t have the balls to tell him all this stuff? At the end of the world? Like, if not then, when?”

“You could say it now,” Harold urges, “if you like.”

Lionel blinks up at him, gaze flinty. “I had my chance, pal. And you had yours. Turns out,” he murmurs as he rolls onto his side, “you were fine. You were in fuckin’ Europe somewhere. I was eating myself up and Sameen was trying to find her way all alone and the dog was lonely and you were in France or some shit.” He blinks up at Harold with his red-rimmed eyes. “Why didn’t that matter?”

“I don’t know,” Harold admits. “It ought to have.”

Exhausted, his eyes slide shut. In time, Lionel’s breathing deepens, becomes a soft snore. Harold rises to his feet. 

He supposes he is fortunate. Lionel might have refused to speak to him. It was an ugly conversation but there might have been no conversation at all. No progress, one way or the other. Horrible limbo.

“I ought to have left him alone,” Harold says aloud in the kitchen. He’s not quite certain when he picked up the habit of talking to himself. He never used to. He supposes that always having a friend in his ear set a precedent for this sort of behavior.

He wishes, very suddenly, that he had not thought of that night in the hotel, of the bathrobe slipping open. What an awful thought to have, tonight of all nights. Harold supposes it’s because he had a little bit to drink. When he’s sober, it feels too much like a dream, too foggy and intangible to bother recalling. 

Lionel had been eager that night, a little shy, and filled with a jittery neediness that made his touches soft and hungry all at once.  _ He won’t be like that again, _ Harold thinks to himself.  _ I had my chance. _

So it’s better to forget. 

He turns on the stove. He boils new water for tea.


	6. Chapter 6

For the fourth or perhaps the fifth time, Harold rethinks scrambled eggs. They’d seemed a safe bet at first - quick to make, difficult to ruin, and the finished product has a sunny, agreeable color - but first he thought perhaps they were too soft and runny and then perhaps he let them go a little too long and now they seem alright but he’s almost certainly trying too hard and maybe if he scraped them into the trash and Lionel was never any the wiser, that would be best for everyone.

Except with at least three failed eggs in the trash already and hastily purchased coffee percolating in a hastily purchased coffee machine, can there be any doubt that Harold is trying too hard?

An evenly golden slice of brioche bursts cheerfully from the toaster. Harold puts it on the plate beside the eggs and leans against the counter, nibbling anxiously on a strip of bacon as he listens to Lionel turn over in bed again and groan, low and soft.

_ If you wait any longer,  _ Harold thinks,  _ the toast will be cold, and then what will have been the point of any of this?  _

He loads up the tray - the plate of eggs and bacon and toast, the mug of coffee, the big glass of water, the two Aspirin - and brings it into the room

Sometime in the night, Lionel seems to have divested himself. His shirt and his trousers are crumpled in a careless heap at the foot of the bed and Lionel is sitting up, propped against the headboard, stripped down to his undershirt and boxer shorts and worn-in socks. He has his eyes shut and his head tilted back and he looks, well…

_ He looks terrible, _ Harold’s brain hastily supplies.  _ He looks pale, he looks dehydrated, he looks hungover, he looks like he’s had a terrible night so if you stand here thinking about the muscles in his forearms or the freckles on his shoulders or how badly you want to touch his hair then you are, unequivocally, a monster. So don’t start. _

“You should eat something,” Finch says, evenly.

Lionel’s brow furrows, tightens. “Please don’t talk.” His voice is sticky and rough.

Harold steps forward and rests the tray on the bed, inching it as close to Lionel’s thigh as he dares. “At least have some Aspirin.”

Lionel’s eyes creak open, sleepy and blue and barely awake. “You’re an angel,” he murmurs. He sounds perhaps as much as half-sincere. He knocks the pills back, follows it by slowly, seriously downing the glass of water, his throat twitching with each gulp. Finally, he puts the glass down, and regards the tray with quiet curiosity. “You tryin’ to win me over with breakfast?”

Harold clears his throat. “I don’t -”

“It’s not a bad plan.” Lionel takes the coffee mug in his hands, warms his fingers against the sides. He takes a slow, intimate sip and when he speaks again, his voice is clearer. “You’ve had worse.”

“I just know you’ve had a difficult night,” Harold says. “And if I can…”

Lionel holds up one hand and Harold trails off. 

“Listen,” he says. “I, um. I had a real bad night. And I want you to know that...that’s not on you. You coming back, I mean. I didn’t have to...I’m in charge of me.” He wipes his eyes. They’re dry. “You didn’t make me drink. That was my fuck-up.” Lionel scratches the back of his head, takes another sip of coffee. “Fuck. I gotta call work.”

“No need. I told them you were sick.”

Lionel exhales, grins faintly. “Close enough, I guess. Thanks.”

“It was no trouble.” Harold feels a hard, hot shape in his chest, in his throat. Lionel seems so warm and fragile all of a sudden.

“Listen,” Lionel says again. “You’re not off the hook. The tracking thing last night...I didn’t appreciate it. If I don’t get to know if you’re alive or dead for a year, you don’t get to stalk me. I think that’s fair.”

Harold finds himself nodding along. 

“But I shouldn’t have been in that bar and I don’t know how long I would have stayed or what I would have done if you hadn’t come along. And you brought me back to your place. You gave up your bed. You made me breakfast. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Oh, I…”

“Point is,” Lionel interrupts, “and listen real hard now, because I’m not going to say this again for a long-ass goddamn time, but: thank you. I mean it.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Don’t think you’re forgiven for all that other shit either,” Lionel adds, taking a slightly aggressive bite of toast. “I know it’s maybe more complicated than I know, but. I’m not just gonna get over that.”

“I understand,” Harold says. 

“But I’m glad you’re alive. And you’re alright. You’re being real nice to me right now, even though you’re tired as shit. So. Thanks.” He drains the mug and sets it firmly down on the tray. “You don’t even  _ drink  _ coffee,” Lionel says, and Harold wonders when he noticed that.

The words stick in his throat for a moment, but what Harold finally asks is “What comes next?”

Lionel groans, rubs his temples, stretches out one leg. “With you and me and Shaw? Or when am I gonna get out of your apartment, do you mean?”

“There’s no rush,” Harold reassures. “On either question. But it seems like the second might be easiest to answer right now.”

“Right.” He stretches, cracks his back. “Since you went to the trouble of making it, I guess I better have breakfast. And then I guess I’ll get dressed and get out of here.”

“There’s the shower,” Harold says, tilting his head in the direction of the en suite bathroom. “If you need it.”

“I’m OK,” Lionel says. He touches his phone, lying on the sheets beside him. “Do you, uh. You mind if I call someone? In private?” 

“Of course not.”

“My sponsor,” Lionel adds, as if he feels the need to explain why he doesn’t want Harold listening, why it’s important Harold doesn’t listen  _ this time _ . “If I wait, I’m gonna find an excuse to not call.”

“Oh,” Harold says, backing towards the door. “Take all the time you need.”

Harold doesn’t listen, exactly. It would be easy to do. It would be wildly disrespectful, but it wouldn’t be the first of Lionel’s private conversations he’s eavesdropped on and it would be hideously, insultingly easy. 

But he doesn’t.

The issue is, the walls aren’t exactly soundproof and he catches phrases from time to time. He hears the soft clink of silverware. And then he hears Lionel make the call, hears Lionel’s voice break on the phrase “I fucked up,” and then he hears “Not bad news, just...weird news, I guess,” and then “An old friend showed up, somebody I hadn’t seen for a while” and the hesitation, the tremor on the word “friend”, makes Harold find his largest, most noise-cancelling headphones. Aphex Twin is selected, primarily for the volume, and that’s what he listens to as he washes the frying pan, and that drowns out everything. 

So much so that it takes him a while to notice Lionel peering out of the bedroom door, eyes still red, shirt rumpled, tray balanced on his arm.

“There,” Lionel sets the tray on the counter as Harold pulls the headphones off and lets them dangle around his neck. “Got it over with.”

“Well done,” Harold says. He’s certain that’s not the right thing to say, not the right sentiment. But it’s all he can think of, and Lionel doesn’t seem troubled by it. 

Lionel brushes crumbs into the sink. Casually, he asks, “You listen?”

“No.” And then, with some effort, “That’s not quite true. I heard the beginning of your conversation through the wall. So I put music on.”

Lionel gathers a clattering handful of silverware, head down. “Guess I have to take your word for it.”

This is going poorly. “It might have comforted you if I’d lied,” Harold says to him stiffly as he takes the plate, scrubs it aimlessly in the sink, “and said I heard nothing at all. But that’s what I would say if I  _ had  _ been listening and didn’t want you to know about it. So, to be completely transparent:  _ yes _ , I heard a small part of your conversation before taking steps to ensure that I wouldn’t hear more. Does that satisfy you?” 

His outburst is met with a long silence, but when Harold finally finds the courage to steal a glance at him, he finds that Lionel has already fixed him with a curious stare, the corner of his mouth drawn up in a smirk. “You maybe overthought that,” he says. “Yeah, I’m satisfied.”

“Good,” although Harold doesn’t feel good, he feels like he’s being secretly hated. He returns to his nervous dishwashing. “My...lack of transparency has been a source of tension between us. I’d like for it not to be, in the future.”

Lionel takes up a useful position beside him, sliding rinsed tableware into the dishwasher as Harold passes it to him. “Yeah. I’d like that too.”

“How’s your head?” Harold asks.

“Still works.”

“What will you do now?”

An intake of breath as he considers. “Go home. Drink some water. Sleep it off. Think things over. I dunno.”

“May I call you a car?”

“No, it’s OK. Gonna walk for a while. Get a little fresh air.”

“Of course. Sounds...healthy.”

“Yeah.” Lionel drums his fingers on the counter. “About us. You and me and Shaw. We’ll, um. We’ll call you. I know that’s just a thing people say, but we actually will. There’s been a whole handful of times where we wished we still had your help and, uh. I don’t know. It’ll be fun.” He attempts a smile. “Get the gang back together. What’s left of it, anyway.”

“I’d like that.”

“So, um. Hang out. Get some sleep. Do...whatever you do. And I’ll call you or text you or...I’ll get in touch. I know where you live.”

He does. What an unsettling idea. He’s never even known where Harold’s office is before. This whole venture suddenly feels like a mistake. 

“Don’t move,” Lionel says, as if he can hear Harold’s thoughts, “just ‘cause I know where your apartment is. I didn’t move just ‘cause you knew where my apartment was.”

“I would have known where you went.” Harold wonders what stupid part of him felt the need to say that.

“It’s not bad, you know,” he says at the door. “If your friends know where to find you. That’s not a problem in my mind.”

Harold smiles, a genteel stretching of the lips, his teeth gritted.

The door closes. 

It’s his own fault, of course. A lapse in judgement, brought on by pity. And by affection, he supposes. And desperation, too, a crawling desperation to be liked. He’ll have to be wary of such influences in the future. 

Perhaps this is his penance. Accessibility. Having a fixed location. A blow to his precious privacy. Hardly seems worth it.

But then, Lionel said he would call on him, when he was needed.

But then, Lionel smiled at him as he went, a shy and curious twitch of the lips.

At noon, a man comes to install a set of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Harold perches on the couch to watch him work, his lips pursed as he tries to finish off the remainder of that morning’s pot of coffee, now quite cold.

It’s a bitter proposition.


	7. Chapter 7

“Not to get emotional,” Sameen begins, with no perceptible emotion in her voice, “but were you OK last night?”

There’s a pause of about a millisecond, a very quiet intake of air on the line. “Yeah,” Lionel tells her. “Just needed some time to myself.”

He doesn’t mention meeting Harold.

He doesn’t mention the drinking. 

He clears his throat. “What about you? You OK?”

A tiny scoff. “Don’t ask stupid questions.” Her voice dips: serious and confidential. She asks, “What’s your read on him?”

Lionel’s pause is careful, tender. “Dunno. Quiet. Sad, I guess. I don’t think he’s  _ compromised _ , if that’s what you mean.”

Sameen laughs a little, mean and sharp but not disagreeing. Of  _ course  _ Finch isn’t compromised. That kind of faith can be reassuring.

“I also think he’s really serious about wanting to come back,” Lionel continues. “I think if he knew -”

“Before you say anything,” she interrupts, “you should know he’s listening.”

Harold drops the book he’s shelving. It falls all the way down, bouncing off the ladder as it goes. Harold sighs, adjusts his earpiece. He begins the difficult journey back down the ladder. 

It’s irritating to be caught out so soon. 

Lionel sounds only faintly surprised. “You got tech I don’t got, Shaw?”

“‘Course I do. But I don’t need it to know he’s listening.”

“Yeah.” Lionel sighs deeply. “Guess that’s just what he’d do.”

She says, with the confidence of someone who puts tracking devices on everyone she loves, “I’d do it, if I were him.”

“I guess we put him on probation?” Lionel asks at last. “Just for now.”

“Make sure he hasn’t lost his touch?”

“Something like that.” He clears his throat. “We’ve been doing things a certain kind of way for a while now. I wanna see if he can handle that.”

“This is kinda fun for you, isn’t it?”

“No. Jesus. I just don’t want to get pushed out again.”

“I wouldn’t let him push you out.”

Lionel scoffs.

“Not now,” she amends.

“He knows the ropes better than we do,” Lionel says, like he’s counting off reasons on his fingers. “He’s smarter than us. He can do stuff we can’t do; stuff we wish we could do. We’d be better with him. It’d be a mistake not to bring him back in.”

“It’s good you know that,” she says. “I didn’t want to have to twist your arm until you admitted it.”

“Hey, I’m a team player, right?” He sighs. “You wanna call him or should I?”

“You’re the handler,” she says. “You call him.”

* * *

The call comes through a few minutes later. He wonders if Lionel hesitated, if Lionel wrung his hands. Harold lets the phone ring a little longer than he needs to.

“You get all that?” Lionel asks.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re on probation for now. Working from home. We can pay you, if that’s something you need.”

That stings, just slightly. “I’ve never done this for the money.”

“I know,” he says, with shocking warmth. “Didn’t want to offend you by throwing numbers around.”

“Courteous. How long will I be on probation?”

“Tough to say. Not really my call to make. We’ll figure it out as we go.”

“When do I start?”

“We’ll let you know,” he says. “Soon.”

Harold, perched on the arm of his chair, takes a look around his apartment. He’s employed now. He has a job. 

He’s going to have to buy a desk.


	8. Chapter 8

He sits now on the thinnest cusp of being settled.

The desk chair he purchased - stunningly ergonomic - glides effortlessly over the polished hardwood floors when he pushes it away. With a final twist of an allen wrench, his new desk is fully assembled. His desktop is a custom build, imperfect but serviceable for now. He’ll have time to rebuild and experiment, and anyway, it’s not as though he has the whole Machine to support.

It’s a fresh start. A new beginning.

He can’t help but be nervous.

The knock on the door makes him drop his wrench.

It’s an unfamiliar sound. Were he prone to introspection - and, unfortunately, he is - it might occur to Harold that for many people, the sound of a knock signals the arrival of friends or family or, at the very least, takeout and is generally cause for joy. For still others - people who live upon the fringes - a knock on the door foretells the arrival of an enemy or the chickens coming home to roost. It’s cause for fear. 

For the sound to be wholly alien...one could consider it sad.

Were one prone to introspection.

The knock comes again, faster and harder.

When Harold peers through the peephole, Lionel is there in the hallway, shifting from foot to foot. He’s got a backpack slung over his shoulder and his eyes are sharp and urgent.

Harold throws open the door. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know.” Lionel unslings the backpack. “Mind starting early?”

“On one condition.”

Lionel’s brow furrows and Harold can see the spite boiling in him, the  _ you’re in no place to try to make deals with me _ form at the back of his throat like spit, like poison. Hurriedly, Harold stands aside, extends an arm into the apartment.

“Turn my desk over?” he pleads. “I assembled it upside down and now…”

A smile, fine and sheepish, forms on Lionel’s lips before it’s summarily brushed away. “Yeah, I could do that much for you,” he says as he passes Harold the backpack and shrugs out of his jacket.

“I didn’t expect to receive my first assignment so soon,” Harold says pushing the door closed with his foot. “Or...in person.”

“I thought I’d check up on you,” Lionel says over his shoulder as he undoes his cuffs, peels back his shirt sleeves. “Make sure things were going OK over here. Looks like you’re settling in!” He looks up, rakes his cunning eyes over the bare spots on the walls, the half-empty shelves, the stacks of cardboard boxes still unpacked. “Kinda.”

“I’ve been focused on preparing for work,” Harold explains. “Interior decoration can wait.”

“Don’t you have people for that?” Lionel asks. “Make a phone call, have a professional fill the place up with fancy furniture? Mysterious knickknacks? That kinda thing.”

“I’ve done it that way in the past,” Harold acknowledges. “Although I try to supply my own knickknacks where possible. But I wanted the new apartment to be...I don’t know. Personal, I suppose. Take this desk, for example.”

“Right.” Lionel kneels down beside it, takes the desk by two legs, and seems surprised by how easy it is to lift. “IKEA’s finest. Not the kinda thing I’d have picked out for you.” He rotates the desk in the air and sets it on all four feet, as gently as you might a small dog. “Not that anyone ever asked me.”

“Very perceptive. I’ll have to involve you in the decorating process.”

Lionel winces, as if to say _ please don’t _ . 

“I’ve compromised here, since I urgently need a desk. But in other cases, I’m opting to...to wait for the appropriate pieces. For as long as necessary. Will you…” Harold’s eyes dart to the gently glowing computer tower on the floor. “Will you help me lift this? And will you promise to be very careful?” 

“Sure,” Lionel says. “I guess if this vigilante stuff doesn’t work out for me, I can always move furniture for a living.”

“I don’t recommend it. Not with  _ your  _ knees.”

Lionel snorts as he lifts the tower, but he doesn’t drop it. Doesn’t even jostle it. “Your assignment’s in the backpack, if you want to check it out.”

Harold unzips the bag, unveils a smooth and pristine Macbook. “You want me to crack into it?”

“If you can. Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother you, but…” Lionel falls silent as he carefully sets the tower down on the desk without so much as a creak. “...My regular guy’s busy, you’re a hell of a lot closer, and I am short on time.”

“Of course. It’s a pedestrian machine. Won’t take long at all.” He opens it up at the kitchen table and gets to work.

Lionel stands up, cracks his lower back with a small groan. “You need anything else moved, while I’m here? See what the couch looks like on the other wall?”

“I know you’re joking,” Harold sighs. “But if you could put those monitors on the desk, I’d be immensely grateful.”

Lionel holds very still for a long second, as though weighing his options, cycling through retorts and objections, before finally landing on acquiescence. “Why not?” he says with a sharp, mean little grin. “It’s the least I can do.”

Lionel’s gentle, however, in his task. He approaches the monitors with the respect and care of someone who doesn’t quite know how they work or how expensive or breakable they might be. He sets them down carefully, tenderly, and holds his breath while he does it.

“Not to pry,” Harold murmurs as Lionel steps back from the desk, flexing his hands, “but are you well?”

“Am I  _ well _ ?” Lionel repeats, incredulously.

“Are you...goodness, are you healthy? Are you happy? The last time I saw you, you experienced a...perhaps  _ crisis  _ is the wrong word, but you were very sad and very angry and I’ve been worried about you ever since.”

“I woulda thought you’d already know how I was. Aren’t you listening?”

“I’d be lying if I claimed I don’t, on occasion. But it makes me feel...shameful, I suppose. And uncomfortable.”

_ “How about that?” _

“When I first started listening in on you, it was because you were a murderer and I was concerned that you might pose a threat to John or myself. Forgive me if it became a habit. And forgive me for stopping.”

“Jesus. I forgive you.” Lionel’s got one hand on the back of Harold’s new office chair, flexing gently. “And I’m fine. I am. Just needed some time to think things through, I guess.”

“I’m glad to hear it. How’s that going?”

“It’s…” Harold frowns. “...Going.”

“I, uh. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I sprung this on you.” When he looks up at Harold, his eyes are soft and shy. “It’s out of nowhere and I can’t blame you if you’re not ready.”

“Oh, no,” Harold protests. “I...I need to do something. Something other than fuss over furniture and boxes I don’t have the courage to open. Done!”

“Done?”

“I know it’s been a little while since we’ve worked together, Detective. But I think you’ll recall that this used to be my area of expertise.”

Lionel leans in close, braces his hand on the table right next to Harold’s, just centimeters away. “No kidding. That’s amazing.”

“The password is, regrettably, 1234password. Use it as you see fit. Dare I ask what the individual who owned this laptop has done to draw your interest?”

Lionel flashes him a pained sort of grin. “Not at liberty to say.”

“No need to be evasive.”

“It’s not just me,” he says. “It’s an everybody kind of decision.”

“Sameen and yourself?”

“Sure,” he says. “That’s everybody.”

“Very well. I suppose that’s privileged information. And it’s not even my first day yet.”

Lionel closes the laptop and claps Harold hard on the shoulder. “Thanks for being flexible.”

Harold blinks up at him. “I don’t think anyone’s ever accused me of that before.”

“You’re helping people,” Lionel says as he stuffs the laptop back into the bag, as he makes for the door. “Just know that.”

And then he’s gone.

Harold sits at his new desk for the first time, and sets up his new computer. He swivels in his new chair and feels rather like the captain of a ship, as though some great new world lies out before him.

He’s helping people.

_ Just know that. _


	9. Chapter 9

This conversation is not precisely riveting.

But then, they seldom are. Earnestly, Harold’s just happy to be working again. To be working in such an easy way, not scrambling, not terrified, not fearful for anyone’s life. 

Last he checked, Lionel was at the precinct. He remains magnificently, effortlessly trackable, so if Harold wants to know where Lionel goes on his lunch break (and that’ll be soon, you could set your watch to him) he can easily find out. Sameen remained an unseen element for quite some time, but a little while ago, Harold pulled off a not-insubstantial bit of espionage that culminated in him planting a very small tracking device within the lining of her favorite leather jacket. He hopes to have a strong sense of her location up until the winter, when the weather turns. Provided she bundles up, of course.

She’s in a questionable neighborhood right now. Not cause for concern. Sameen can be safe anywhere.

Harold’s got his earpiece in, his hands occupied with a paint roller and pan. He paints strong, magnificent swathes of sage green onto the walls as he listens to Katie Hardiman’s interminably long phone call with her mother. She’s a bit rosy about her job and relationship prospects, if Harold’s research is to be believed. Harold withholds his judgment, takes a step back from the wall, frowns.

His phone beeps: an incoming call. 

He glances at Caller ID and smiles ever so slightly.

“I’d look at Miss Hardiman’s boyfriend, if I were you,” Harold says as he picks up. “He seems to be a suspicious young man.”

“Where do you think Sameen’s at? Posted up on the roof across from his apartment, bored out of her skull.” Lionel answers. “Listen, can I get you anything?”

“Mmm?”

“Lunch.” 

Harold tsks delicately. “I hope you’re not going to that hot dog cart  _ again _ , Detective.”

“None of your goddamn business,” he snaps. “But, for your information, I was thinking sushi.”

A more enticing option. “For the pair of us?”

“Yeah.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Got a job for you. A fun one, not just listening to phone calls.”

“All jobs are fun, Detective. But I’m happy for the company.”

Lionel takes his sushi order with rough-edged diligence and Harold resists the urge to insist on a finer class of sushi restaurant, since Lionel’s footing the bill and he suspects the upgrade would be perceived as a dig. 

He also resists the urge to over-prepare for Lionel’s arrival. It might be quite unremarkable to lay out plates, to retrieve the metal chopsticks that lurk somewhere in his silverware drawer and those perversely small bowls that are really only good for soy sauce. Such a gesture might be seen only as courtesy. But Lionel, for all that he is a rough, blunted sort of person, can be very incisive when he chooses to be.

It wouldn’t do to have him think Harold was doting on him, even a little. Might make things awkward.

As it is, Harold carries on with his work. He rolls yet more paint onto the walls, mounting a stepladder so he can cover those hard-to-reach places. He ruminates on the call between Katie Hardiman and her mother, now mercifully concluded. At last, he sighs, wipes the paint off his fingers and takes a step back, surveying the half-painted wall.

For a long, horrible moment, he regrets sage green.

The bell rings.

It’s interesting to watch Lionel’s face as the door opens, a millisecond of confusion, of amusement, of what Harold dares to hope is affection, before he arranges his face into a careful smirk. “Catch you at a bad time?”

“Oh, no. I’ve been multitasking. Come in.”

Lionel sets his bag of takeout on the counter and begins to disassemble. “You happy with that?” he asks, inclining his head at the painted wall.

“You aren’t?”

“It’s fine! It’s not my place. And I spent too much time renting to even think about painting walls.” He rolls his shoulders. “I was just asking if  _ you _ liked it.”

“It matches,” Harold allows. “Perhaps I’ll warm to it once it’s finished.”

Lionel slides a to-go cup across the table to Harold. He catches it before it slips over the edge. The paper cup is still hot to the touch. 

“You drink green tea, right?”

“I do. Who told you that?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. Maybe I heard it from Wonderboy. Maybe you ordered a cup on the drive down to D.C. Picked it up somewhere. You want it or not?”

“I do,” he says. “Thank you.” 

He sips, delicately. It's not bad tea. Just a little oversteeped. Fusco divvys up their respective sushi rolls and asks if Finch has anything to put soy sauce in, so he goes and gets those tiny little bowls from the cupboard after all.

_ Isn't this nice? _ he allows himself to think as they crowd busily at the table, setting places.  _ Isn't this civilized, in spite of everything? _

"About that job," Harold prompts, quite deliberately while Lionel midway through lifting a piece of sushi in his mouth. It hangs, suspended, between his face and the plate. 

"Yeah," he says after a second. And then, "What do you know about City Hall?"

"In a modern sense or a historical one?"

"I was thinking more modern." Lionel hesitates, weighing pros and cons in his mind. "So, um, say we had to break into the mayor's office."

Finch allows his eyebrows to lift. "Now, why would you want to do that?"

Lionel pops the piece of sushi into his mouth and chews slowly, politely, laboriously, as though hoping Harold will have lost interest in the question by the time he's done. At last, he says, "It's a personal thing."

" _ Lionel _ ."

"I don’t blame you for asking, but I can't tell you. I'm not allowed."

"I rather think you are. Unless I'm mistaken, you're running the show. Or at least, co-running."

"I'm not that important."

Harold sighs very deeply. "I could be more helpful,” he points out, very rationally, “if I knew what it was you wanted."

"I know. And that's ok. You with one hand tied behind your back is still better than most people's best."

Harold feels his ears get hot. “I suppose I could take the time to review some blueprints. What’s your timeline?”

“How’s, uh, tomorrow night?” Lionel winces under Harold’s gaze. “I know. Not like I had a lot of notice.”

“Well, you did see fit to let me sit around  _ socializing, _ ” he says as he pushes his plate of sushi away and makes for his computer, “when I could have been putting a plan together. What are your resources?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Is that so?” Harold throws himself into his chair, sets about searching for schematics, for weak links. 

Lionel repeats, very firmly, “Don’t worry about it.”

The part of him that speaks next is the part that is pedantic and querulous and, perhaps, a little wounded. “Quite the benefactor you must have.”

Lionel murmurs, “Stop that.” He settles beside Harold, rests a hand on the back of his chair and the tea by his left hand.

“It couldn’t hurt, could it?” Harold asks. “To satisfy my curiosity? I’m working for you. I’m not wrong for wanting to know who’s funding this operation.”

“No, you’re not wrong,” Lionel concedes. He’s resting an elbow on Finch’s new desk, pillowing his cheek on his hand. The wry little look in his eyes says, with astounding clarity,  _ But that never made you tell me anything. _

Harold dislikes being withheld from and being considered in this way, as though he were a piece in someone else’s chess game. Particularly Lionel’s. He strikes Harold as more of a checkers sort of person.

_ It’s that kind of thought, _ Harold reminds himself as he returns, sheepishly, to his work,  _ that makes him hold you in such contempt. _

Although he supposes there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that division: the division of chess people and checkers people. A diversity of skill sets is desirable. Admirable. It would only be detestable if he were to consider himself superior on the basis of being a chess person. Or, indeed, a checkers person.

_ Lionel wouldn’t appreciate this line of thought at all, _ Harold decides. Out loud, he says, “It’s not Logan Pierce, is it?”

Lionel chuckles to himself, small and dry. “No,” he says at last. “Would that be a problem for you, if he was?”

“Not materially,” Harold admits. “Logan’s a good man. But…”

“But?”

“I suppose it would sting.”

Lionel claps a hand onto Harold’s shoulder, rather harder than he’d like. “Don’t be stung, pal,” he says. One solid thumb roams along the crest of Harold’s shoulder blade for a long second.

The price of having a truly involving piece of work in his hands is that Lionel seems to fade away after a time. His presence is mildly distracting, but ultimately immaterial to the task at hand. Harold becomes aware, after a time, that Lionel is no longer at his elbow and before he has the time to wonder where he slipped off to or feel guilt at not saying goodbye, he hears the clink of dishes in the sink. 

A little bit later, Harold emerges from an in-depth look under the hood of the security system he knows to be installed in city hall and realizes that the dishes are all cleared and that the air smells of fresh paint. 

He spins in his chair to see Lionel - jacketless and shoeless and tieless, sleeves rolled to the elbow - diligently rolling sage green paint onto the wall.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“Finishing up,” Lionel says, eyes on his work. “It’s fine; I’m takin’ a long lunch.”

“It’s not necessary, Detective.”

He snorts. “I knew that when I started. But it’s, you know.” He pushes the roller high up the wall, makes a thin slice of white disappear. “Art therapy or whatever.”

“Yes. I see. Who  _ are  _ your influences, Detective? Besides Rothko.”

“Fuck off,” Lionel answers cheerfully. “Drink your tea and get back to work.”

Obediently, Harold does. The tea’s quite cold, but his mouth is rather dry, and it occurs to him that he hasn’t had a drink in a little while. 

He emerges from a tangled knot of propositions and counter-propositions, decision trees, Plans A - F, to find that Lionel is taking a phone call while putting on his shoes. 

“Got it,” he’s saying. “Got it, I’m right there. Just keep your shirt on, pal.” A brief pause. “How bad we talkin’?” More listening and then: “OK, get yourself to Urgent Care. The one on...no, not that one. The one on...Yeah. Say you fell down the stairs or somethin’. Use the shadow map at least until you’re out of the neighborhood. Anyone asks, you were never in Astoria. I’ll meet you there, pick you up. Sit tight.”

Lionel hangs up, begins struggling into his jacket. “You were right about the boyfriend,” he says, in answer to Harold’s stare.

“Is it serious?” Harold asks, already half-risen out of his seat.

“It’s fine. She’s fine. Number’s cooperating, boyfriend’s unconscious, Sameen’s sitting on the both of ‘em until I get over there and make it look official.”

Harold startles the rest of the way out of the chair. “Is Miss Shaw hurt?”

“ _ What _ ?” he answers. And then, “Oh. No, she’s fine. It’s all fine. Thank you for…” He gestures absently to Harold’s computer, begins patting his pockets as though he forgot something. 

“I’ll send you what I have,” Harold says. He sinks down to pluck Lionel’s tie from the floor. “I know I’ve been rather slow, but…” He drapes the tie around Lionel’s neck, begins to knot it for him as Lionel sorts out his cuffs and lapels. “...only because I try to be comprehensive.”

“That’s fine,” Lionel says. “That’s why I come to you.”

“Oh, dear,” Harold murmurs. “Is that all?”

Lionel pats the back of his hand cautiously, curiously. “That and art therapy.”

There’s a tiny spot of green paint on Lionel’s breast pocket and it’s so dear Harold can’t bring himself to mention it. “Call you a car?”

“Thanks,” Lionel says, “but it’s gotta look official.”

Harold steps back. “Very well, then.” He clears his throat. “I’ll have those plans for you within the hour.”

“Thanks,” Lionel tells him again. He looks up at Harold, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “You’re a lifesaver.”

And, quite abruptly, he’s gone. Harold barely has time to lamely call out to him, “Drive safe!” before the door slams and he’s alone in the apartment again. 

The wall, he finds, is very suitably painted. A nice, even coat. No streaks. No drips. No thin patches. Not a drop spilled, save for on the tarp.  _ And on Lionel’s breast pocket, _ he can’t help but recall. 

Harold places the finishing touches on his flowcharts and sends them on to Lionel. He steps away from the computer. He does his stretches on the rug in the living room, which he’s already beginning to have doubts about. He makes himself a light supper in the kitchen. 

By the time the sun sets, he’s certain he hates sage green. 


	10. Chapter 10

A  _ field  _ assignment. The very notion makes him flush with excitement.

The plan - as far as Harold understands it - is as follows: 

He will enter the office of the executive director of a major environmental nonprofit. During the briefing, Lionel encouraged Harold to construct his cover identity as he saw fit (“Knock yourself out, champ” were his exact words). Harold is now Harold Jay, an earnest scribbler in the employ of an environmental journal of no particular distinction. He’s rather pleased. He hasn’t pretended to be a journalist for a very long time, and he always enjoys it.

His primary objective will be to plant a bug in the office. His secondary objective will be to wear an earpiece and take direction very, very well. His tertiary objective will be to not complain too much about having to take direction. Sameen impressed this upon him during the planning phase. 

Well, he’s not in a complaining mood. In fact, he’s rather chipper. He supposes it’s due to a combination of factors. For one thing, espionage has always given Harold a little bit of a thrill. For another, he’s pleased to be away from the penthouse, which seems to eternally smell of paint. For yet another, this seems to be an unquestionable, inescapable sign that they’re beginning to trust him again.

“What’re you so happy about, Harold?” Sameen asks in his ear as he steps into the elevator.

“I’m just happy to be working again,” he says as the doors slide shut. 

That sense of purpose follows him up to the 10th floor, where he waits politely and shabbily by the receptionist’s desk until the executive director - Daniel Burnham, 6’1”, salt and pepper hair, kind eyes - comes out to shake his hand. Harold wonders, as he steps into Burnham’s glass-walled office, if he’s just met a killer or a potential victim. It occurs to him seconds later that this could be the case with anyone he’s met in the past year; it’s only that the margins of possibility were never so narrow. 

Harold wrote his interview questions in advance, with room for deviation if necessary, so the next stages are really quite easy. He maintains friendly eye contact with Burnham while he asks his earnest, puffy questions and laughs very appropriately at all of Burnham’s jokes. He takes eager notes on Burnham’s lifelong quest to curb fracking on the East Coast and the legislators he’s been working with of late to make that dream a reality. In a particularly deft move - if Harold dares say so himself - he tucks his bugged pen into the concrete pen holder on Burnham’s desk and seamlessly replaces it with an identical pen from his own pocket. Mission, he imagines, accomplished.

He’s cheerfully taking the interview for a bit of a walk when, for the first time, Sameen feels the need to interrupt.

“Hey, Harold.” Her voice crackles in his ear and Harold decides that once this is over, he’s giving them new earpieces. “Everything going OK?”

“Very good,” Harold says, rather pointedly, in response to Burnham’s excitable outline of his organization’s reforestation goals.

“OK. Brace yourself,” she says.

Harold waits very patiently for further instruction.

After a few seconds, she says, “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Harold’s heart thuds. He begins to jiggle his knee beneath the desk, just out of Burnham’s line of sight. His voice does not falter. 

He braces himself. For what, he doesn’t know.

The first sign of a problem comes at the corner of his eye, the blurry shape of a commotion. Someone at the receptionist’s desk, arguing.

Curious, that he should be so easy to identify, even like this. Harold can’t even really look at him or hear him through the glass. He has only the vaguest impressions. But he supposes this is what familiarity breeds, or affection. This ease of identification. If Harold saw people - which he does very rarely now - he wonders if he would see Lionel everywhere, in anyone familiar.

The commotion approaches the glass and, at last, Burnham turns to face it. 

As the office door bursts open, the first thing they hear is the receptionist saying, “Mr. Burnham, I’m so sorry, he just barged in, I-”

“You’re Daniel Burnham?” Lionel interrupts, leaning in the office door, looking straight past Harold without an ounce of recognition in his face.

“I am,” Burnham says, as though he’s not certain he should be admitting to it. “Can I help you with something?”

Lionel flashes his badge. “Detective Fusco, NYPD. Sorry to interrupt,” he says, sounding not remotely sorry. “I’m gonna need you gentlemen to step out here with me.”

Burnham rises cautiously from his seat. “What’s this about?”

“Just do what he says,” Sameen’s saying in Harold’s ear. 

“You’re wanted for questioning down at the station,” Fusco says, indicating Burnham, “in connection with an Emily Cascarello. Some kinda energy exec.” He indicates Harold. “You, I don’t care about so much, but you better beat feet all the same.”

Dutifully, Harold collects his jacket and his messenger bag. “I suppose I have all I need for the profile…” he murmurs, stubbornly in-character. 

“Hang on just a moment,” Burnham says, rounding his desk. “I do know Cascarello, yes, but we’re not connected. In fact, we’re…”

“Go,” Sameen’s saying in Harold’s ear. “Just keep going.”

“Yeah, it’s more a Sharks and the Jets kinda thing,” Lionel interrupts. He looks nervous. Harold wonders if Lionel’s on the same feed, if Sameen’s whispering to him too. “I picked up on that. You’re not under arrest, Mr. Burnham, but I am gonna need you to come with me right now.”

Something about Lionel’s tone makes Burnham take his coat off the hook by the door. “Nance,” he says, talking past Lionel to his receptionist. “I think you better cancel my appointments for today.”

Sameen’s voice comes through the feed harsh and a little too loud when she says, “Just get on the ground.”

All at once Lionel’s lunging into Harold, all his bulk carrying them to the floor, and Harold barely has the presence of mind to seize Burnham by the sleeve and drag him along as they fall.

They slam into the carpet and the impact drives all the air out of Harold. He’s still lying there, fighting for breath, when the gunshots ring out. Twice, sharp and deafening, showering them in broken glass. Lionel shifts on top of him, shields Harold’s eyes with his forearm, shouts, “Stay down!” and Harold isn’t quite sure who he’s talking to.

Further back in the office, people are screaming. 

A few quiet, terrible seconds. The whistle of the wind through the holes in Burnham’s office windows. The warm weight of Lionel on top of him. The rasp of bad office carpeting on his back.

The frantic, gleeful thud of his heart.

Lionel rolls off of Harold suddenly, deftly, and flops beside him with a soft grunt. He blinks at Harold. “You OK?”

Harold tries to answer, lets out a pained wheeze. 

“Oh fuck, I broke him,” Lionel says under his breath. And then, “You OK, Mr. Burnham?”

“I’m…” Burnham attempts. He tries again. “What’s happening?”

“Somebody’s shooting at you,” Lionel explains. “You hit at all?”

“No. No, I don’t think so. I…”

“Listen,” Lionel says, with a surprising amount of warmth, “keep your trap shut a second.” He takes a deep breath, marshals his patience, and shouts to the office in general, “OK, sound off! Anybody hit?”

There’s a soft, nervous murmuration, some whimpering, a quiet sob. Not much information to be gained from that.

The secretary, crouching in the doorway with her arms folded over her head, finally answers. “I don’t think so. I think they went into the wall. I can go check, if you…”

Lionel waves his hand. “No, no, no. You just stay down and stay put. Cavalry’s on its way.” He touches his ear and says, very softly, “How’re we doing?”

Sameen’s end of the comm comes to life with a series of loud, sharp reports. She says, “Not a good time,” and then goes quiet.

Lionel lets his head relax to the carpet with a sigh. “You holding up?” he asks, giving Harold’s hand a gentle squeeze.

Harold tries and, rather croakily, succeeds. “It’s bearable.”

Lionel pats him gently on the shoulder, brushes powdery glass off of his lapel. “Atta boy.”

“Did you know that was going to happen?” Harold asks him.

“If I did,” Lionel says, “you think I would’ve wasted all that time beating around the bush?”

“Well,” Harold pants, “I certainly hope not.”

“We got ‘em,” Sameen’s saying in his ear. “We got ‘em. Everybody OK?”

Lionel sits up with a groan. “More or less. What the hell happened?”

“These guys escalated fast.” She’s panting a little. “If you wanna get rid of the guy who’s threatening your business, you make them disappear. Make it look like an accident. Frame somebody else. You don’t shoot up their office in broad daylight.”

“You think we got it wrong?”

“I think you need to move him.”

“Got it,” he says, yanking Burnham to his feet. “OK, listen, folks,” he says, a good deal louder. “Some officers will be along in a second to take your statements. Just stay low to the ground and sit tight. I gotta get your boss outta here.”

He drags Burnham out of the office. As he slides past Harold, he squeezes his upper arm.

A few minutes later, Harold’s managed to slip into the breakroom and treat himself to some incredibly weak Keurig tea when his earpiece crackles to life again.

“Sorry about that,” Lionel says.

“Oh,” Harold says as he weighs cane sugar against Stevia, “please don’t be. I’ve taken far worse.”

“That’s not what…” Lionel sputters to a cranky halt, restarts. “I put you in a lot of danger today and it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t know enough about the situation. I didn’t know it was about to blow up like that. I shoulda let you stay home today.”

“I had to reenter the field at some point,” Harold insists. “And it was exhilarating.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m glad somebody had a good time.” And then, “Listen, the cops are still around 60 seconds away. You don’t have to…”

“I think I’d better. I’d prefer that there be no confusion as far as I’m concerned, and my...credentials are up to the challenge.”

“OK,” Lionel says. “Take care of yourself.”

“And you, Detective.”

“Talk soon.” The call cuts off.

In this miserable break room, with its fluorescent lights and its weak tea and its occupants sullen and shaken, Harold’s heart lifts.


	11. Chapter 11

The knock on the door is cause for immediate concern. It’s likely the police: Harold’s credentials haven’t held up after all. Or it’s the NSA: they know he’s in the country again and they’re furious. Or it’s the last remnants of Decima, here to destroy him.

And these organizations would all, of course, knock. And knock politely, at that.  _ Come on, Harold. _

He picks himself off the couch and makes for the door, all the while trying to recall if he ordered food earlier. He  _ did _ , he remembers as he rounds the kitchen counter. He ordered Thai food and he ate about half of it. Oh, dear. 

He puts his eye to the peephole and for the second time today, his heart lifts. 

He throws the door open, fails, realizes he didn’t take off the security chain, closes the door, takes down the security chain, and throws it open again. “Detective. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

Lionel’s smile is wide and bemused and just the tiniest bit condescending. “Doin’ alright, pal?”

“Perfectly fine. Thank you.”

Lionel leans a little in his doorway, visibly drinking in Harold’s unbuttoned collar, his tousled hair, the pipe perched between his fingers.

As seriously as he can manage, Harold says, “I’ve got a prescription.”

“What am I, a cop?” Fusco asks. “Can I come in?”

Harold steps back, allows him into the apartment.

Lionel takes a few steps in and cranes his head back. “Wall’s yellow now. What the hell did I do all that painting for?”

The wall is, to Harold’s eternal regret, yellow now. Regret: because what was intended to be cheerful now feels garish, because the brightness of that wall gives him a headache, because he has somehow given Lionel another way to dig at him.

“I was unhappy with the green,” Harold sighs as he flops onto his sofa. “But I am sorry to have wasted your time.”

Lionel shakes his head. “You didn’t waste my time. I’m just bustin’ your balls. How are you?”

“Well, my balls have been busted. But otherwise, I’m well.” Harold narrows his eyes. “Did you not like my answer when you asked that question the first time?”

He has to wait a while for Lionel to stop chuckling, near silently, into his sleeve. “Dunno if you know this about yourself, Harold,” he says, wiping his eyes, “but you’re not always an open book. You had your first field mission in over a year today. You got shot at. You got covered in broken glass. I tackled you, which couldn’t’ve been fun. And you might be just fine after all that, pal. But if you weren’t, that wouldn’t be so crazy.”

Goodness, that was all today. He feels like he stepped into the identity of Harold Jay weeks ago. Harold puts his feet up on the arm of the sofa deliberately, thoughtfully. “My back does ache,” he admits, “from when you threw me to the ground.”

“Well, I am sorry about that.”

“But it’s really nothing to worry about,” Harold insists. “This is precisely the sort of thing I signed up for.”

“You’re a champ,” Lionel says. “But if you’re gonna get thrown around, I’d like it to mean something.”

“Oh, goodness,” Harold sighs. “There’s no way to guarantee that. Do you imagine I would have placed you in harm’s way as often as I did if that were something that could be predicted with any degree of confidence?”

Lionel’s quiet for a moment. “I guess I never thought about it like that.”

“How is Mr. Burnham?”

“He’s good. He’s in protective custody. You wanna know what happened?”

“No.” Harold sits up a little. “I’d like to tell you what happened.” 

“Yeah?”

Harold pats the cushion beside him. It makes a solid, muffled, tight sound and it occurs to Harold that no one but him has ever sat on this sofa before. 

Without noting the gravity of the situation, Lionel settles in beside him with a soft sigh. He tilts his head back, lets his eyes close for just a second, and it dawns on Harold how tired he must be. “It’s a nice couch,” Lionel says at last.

“I’m thinking of getting a Chesterfield,” Harold murmurs absently.

“Sure.” Lionel indicates the pipe. “Can I?”

“ _ Can _ you?”

Lionel elbows him gently. “The fuck are you, a grade school teacher?  _ May  _ I smoke a bowl with you Mr. Finch, please?”

Harold passes it to him. 

The drag Lionel takes is not inexperienced, although perhaps he is out of practice. He coughs a little on the exhalation. “What the hell are they feeding those plants these days?”

“Progress marches ever onward, Detective,” he sighs. “I believe it’s down to selective breeding, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss.”

“No.”

“No,” Harold affirms. “You first became aware of a threat to Daniel Burnham’s life. This before anything, perhaps everything else. You researched him and discovered that he and energy executive Emily Cascarello had a particularly volatile political relationship. You uncovered a viable threat.”

Lionel nods cautiously and hands him the pipe.

“Mmmmm.” He takes another slow, pensive puff. “But you didn’t know how she’d do it. Perhaps you had reason to believe that an attempt on his life would come at the office. Perhaps you were just covering your bases. In any case, you wanted me to plant a bug. Why you didn’t just clone his phone, I’ll never know.” 

“Couldn’t do it. Guy’s got good security,” says Lionel, somewhat sheepishly. 

“Hmmm. Amateurs.” Harold stretches out his legs across Lionel’s lap. “You became aware of the encroaching threat.” He considers. “ _ An  _ encroaching threat. You seemed ignorant of the details.”

He admits, “Things were moving fast.”

“Indeed. I presume they hired professionals, so you - or Sameen, rather - understood the threat in an immediate sense although not, perhaps…” His hand wheels in the air for a moment. “...Existentially. You knew who the gunmen were, but the nature of the threat cast doubt upon who hired them. It was too brash. Too obvious. Too absurd. This left you with two possibilities.”

“Oh, yeah?” Lionel lets one hand rest on Harold’s shin. “Lay those out for me.”

“Either Cascarello is completely insane, or so wildly foolish as to be indistinguishable from an insane person. Or…” Harold puffs again. “She’s been framed.” 

“OK, Holmes. Which one is it?”

“She might well be a fool,” Harold acknowledges with a shrug. “But that’s not terribly relevant. One has only to look at the social circles of both persons of interest and consider who benefits from both the death of Daniel Burnham and the arrest of Cascarello and...well, frankly a not-insubstantial group of suspects emerge. But, if one is to then consider whom among that group of potential beneficiaries is under the sort of stress that might trigger such a high-stakes, bizarre plan,  _ and  _ if one is to consider the assassins you arrested earlier and the price their services generally go for,  _ and  _ if one considers whom among this distasteful crew of energy executives is ideally placed to pull off a frame-job of this magnitude, the only possible choice is William Dugard, Cascarello’s right hand man, who possesses a gnawing ambition, a sizeable gambling debt, and a swift path to the top of the corporate ladder, if only his supervisor weren’t in his way.”

“Holy shit.”

“And then one can check the police report after the fact, so as to declare all this with a high degree of confidence.” Harold snuggles luxuriantly into the arm of the couch. “Tell me I’m right.”

“You know you’re right.”

“I know.” His toes curl and uncurl in his socks. “But tell me I’m right.”

Lionel chucks him under the chin. “You’re a smart cookie, Mr. Finch. And you’re right.”

Harold blinks up at him. “Would it have gone faster, do you suppose?” he asks. “If I’d been privy to the same information you were?”

“I don’t doubt that, champ.”

“Then why…?”

“I keep tellin’ you it’s not up to me,” Lionel sighs. “One of these days, you might even believe me.”

“Unlikely,’ sighs Harold, flopping back onto the sofa in a petulant little fit.

“One of these days,” Lionel soothes. His hand slides up and down Harold’s shin, a lazy, tickling touch. “We just need time. Today was good. Kinda makes me want to wrap you in bubble wrap, but...you did good today.”

“Thank you, dear.” And then, almost involuntarily, “That feels nice.”

Lionel’s hand falls guiltily still. 

“I’ve genuinely tried to...to regret what happened. In Washington that night, you know.” Lionel tenses. He knows. “Because it was...I question my own judgment. Why did I allow myself to be so unprofessional? Why did I allow myself to take such shocking advantage of you? I don’t…I very much enjoy the time we spend together, Detective. I think that’s why I find it so difficult to look back on that night with anything but fondness.”

Lionel’s voice rings hollow when he says, “I didn’t know that.”

“Hmm?”

“I didn’t know you...you thought about that.” He swallows, hard. “I kinda thought you maybe forgot. Or you wanted to forget.”

“Oh, goodness. Why?”

“We don’t talk about it.” Lionel’s voice is thick, raspy with smoke. “This is the first time.”

Harold strains to think of a time, a moment. “Ever?” he asks, plaintively.

“In the morning, you acted like it never happened,” Lionel says. “So I did too.”

Goodness. Goodness, he had. Their mission was critical, and he didn’t want to lose sight of it. They had a long drive back to New York ahead of them, and there would be time to talk later. But, of course, the mission went wrong. Lionel’s life was threatened and Harold sent him home early rather than risk distraction. The work in Washington continued. By the time Harold had a moment to breathe, he was Professor Whistler and things were very different.

“There was never a good time,” he laments. “Vigilance launched their attacks. Samaritan went online. We were all forced to adopt new identities, new methodologies.”

“I didn’t know about any of that. I just knew you were busy.”

He’s not certain if Lionel is trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. It comes through anyway.

“I had a free weekend roughly...four months into the whole ordeal. And I thought to myself that perhaps we might...go to dinner. Talk. Determine where to move from here. But then I looked at your calendar and saw you had your son that weekend. And I thought to myself that...that it’d been four months. And that you, like me, had greater concerns.”

Lionel exhales shakily. “John was driving me insane back then. I barely had time to think.”

“I ought to have  _ made  _ time.”

“Where?” Lionel asks. 

There were small holes in the schedule, brief gasps of time. There were moments when he could have taken Lionel aside and asked if he still thought about that night in the hotel, if it felt enormously important to him in the way it did to Harold, if he’d like to try again in a different hotel under less frantic circumstances. 

Never the right moment. Never a moment when he can imagine Lionel answering him in any way other than, “You’re bringing this up  _ now _ ?”

“I don’t know why I make so many mistakes with you.”

“Hey, now.” Lionel pats him hard on the knee. “That was, what? Three years ago? It’s water under the bridge, Finch.”

He winces. “Is it?”

“Yeah, pal.” Lionel touches his shoulder, firm and sympathetic. “We’re different guys now.”

Is he a different man now? He supposes he’s had new experiences, that the cells in his body have had time to turn over. Materially, he must be almost a different person entirely.

He hopes he’s different. That he’s not the sort of person who would allow something like that to slip through his fingers. “I’m very fond of you, Lionel. I hope you know that.”

“You wanna know something weird?”

“Please.”

“I think I like you better now than I did that night.”

“Why on earth would you?”

“I dunno. I’m pretty confused about that myself.” He sits up, gently removes Harold’s legs from his lap. “I think it’s because I understand you a little bit better.”

Harold blinks up at him plaintively. “Are you going?” 

“Afraid so.” He rises from the couch. “Can I get you to move off the couch so you don’t hurt your neck?”

“No need,” Harold says, sitting up with a sigh. “I’m going to run myself a bath.”

“That sounds like a good idea. You’re a smart guy, Harold.”

“There’s no need to be condescending.”

“I’m not,” Lionel says, but there’s a smile on his lips, small and sad. “I swear I’m not.” 


	12. Chapter 12

Harold’s phone chirps, forcing him to look up from the text message history of a woman named Saanvi Desai. The number is…

...Well, at first he was going to say it was unfamiliar. But it isn’t, exactly. Harold has a good memory for this sort of thing - he’d almost have to - and that particular string of numbers seems to tug at something. He’s seen it before.

It’s enough to make him answer.

“Yes?”

“Harold!” the voice at the other end cheers. “Good to hear your voice, man. It’s been for _ ever _ .”

“I...excuse me?”

“I mean, I get it. They’ve been keeping you busy since you came back. But you can’t even carve out a little time for coffee and catch-up with your old pal Leon?”

“Mr. Tao?”

“Wow. OK. Kinda thought we were on better terms than that.”

“No, I just…” Harold takes a breath, collects himself. “Excuse my formality. I’m just surprised. How did you get this number?”

“Shaw’s got a list of emergency when-shit-hits-the-fan contacts that she keeps in the office. She added your name a couple months back. I asked what gives, she said you were consulting now and not to bother you unless it’s an emergency. Which this isn’t. Yet.”

Harold sits up. “Go on.”

“So, are you clued in on the insurance thing?”

“I am not.” Harold pulls his chair up to his desk. “But I assure you, I am all ears.”

As it turns out, he is clued in on the “insurance thing” - roughly ten percent of the insurance thing, as it happens. Saanvi Desai does, after all, work in insurance, and she’s embroiled in what might be a potential scam. Whether she’s the whistleblower or the architect of this scam remains to be seen, and Leon believes that the answer to that question lies within the insurance company’s internal records. And those records are proving a tough nut to crack.

“I mean, I  _ could  _ get in there eventually. I’m learning a lot. But I’m not a hacking guy so much as I am a numbers guy, you know? And I figured, you want the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted, who do you call? Thomas Kinkade could maybe get the job done, but you’re gonna wish you called da Vinci.”

“Michelangelo,” Harold murmurs.

“Sure, man. Whatever Ninja Turtles you want.”

Harold throws himself into the system, into peeling back its layers. “I’ll have it for you in a moment. How  _ did  _ you become aware of Saanvi Desai?” he asks, carefully casual. “I mean, how did you come to focus your attention on her?”

Leon whistles. “That’s way above my paygrade.” After a pause, “Kinda surprised it’s above yours. You were always the man with the plan.”

“I can think of a few ways it might be done,” Harold covers hurriedly. “It’s just professional curiosity.” 

“I dunno,” he sighs. “Shaw and Lionel cover that stuff. I just investigate.”

“How has that been?” Harold asks.

“Good! Good. Like I said, I’m learning on the job a lot. It’s, um, it’s weird, to be honest. Like, I know a lot by this point, but...can’t shake the feeling there’s some stuff I’m never gonna understand about how you guys work and what you guys went through. And I’m just gonna have to make my peace with that.” He sighs, small and petulant. “Just when I was starting to get the hang of things, I’m down to one hand.”

Harold pauses. “Beg your pardon?”

“Oh, shit! No, I still have two hands. My arm’s just in a sling. Dislocated my shoulder during that thing in Queens a while back. You know.”

Harold does know, but only in the abstract. Only in the sense of having overheard half a phone call. “Is that common?”

Leon makes a small, noncommittal sound. “Not, like, all the time. But it’s a dangerous job. You know?”

“I suppose,” Harold says between his teeth, “someone has to do it.”

“Yeah,” says Leon, pleasant and oblivious. “That’s kinda how I see it.”

The system practically pops open in his hands. “It’s done.”

“Already?”

“You did call da Vinci.”

“Harold, you’re a prince. Hey, listen: you wanna grab coffee sometime? I’d really like to pick your brain about the job.”

“You know, that sounds wonderful,” Harold sighs. “But I simply don’t have enough hours in the day.”

“Well, I’ll catch you some other time.”

“I’d like that.”

The call ends.

Harold, almost compulsively, cracks his knuckles. The sound seems to echo in his apartment. Abruptly, Harold stands. Harold paces. Harold turns up the volume on the Saanvi Desai feed and immediately turns it back down because the pop song on her car radio makes his head hurt. Harold sits down. Harold spins in his chair. Harold stands again.

Harold calls Lionel.

The call goes directly to voicemail.  _ Coward _ , Harold catches himself thinking, as though Lionel could possibly divine why he was calling.

Sure enough, a few seconds later, Lionel sends him a text:  _ Can’t talk, I’m in a briefing. Everything OK? _

No, everything is not OK. Harold’s sitting on the bench at his own game while the terminally unreliable Leon Tao is at bat. Harold’s being kept under a veil of secrecy while Leon Tao shares an office space with Shaw and goes on missions and has Lionel to pick him up from urgent care and calls Lionel  _ Lionel  _ and…

It’s possible, Harold reflects as he flops onto his couch in a fit of pique, that I’m a bit jealous. And also, perhaps, a bit lonely.

He replies:  _ Everything is fine. Just had a very unusual conversation with Leon Tao and I have some follow-up questions. _

And a few seconds later:  _ No hurry. Call me when you can. _

_ Read at 3:34 PM. _

Lionel’s silence is damning.

Harold’s in the midst of angrily cleaning his kitchen counter when Sameen, curiously, calls him back.

“Miss Shaw. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Lionel’s busy,” she says. _ And a coward, _ she doesn’t say. “Heard you talked to Leon.”

“I did.”

“Is that a problem?”

Harold considers. “I wasn’t aware that you were working closely with Leon.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says. “We hid that from you.”

“It’s not that I object to his hiring. I’ve worked with Leon previously. He’s very capable, if a bit...impulsive. However…”

“However?” she repeats, sharp-toothed.

"However, I didn’t know.” He takes a deep breath, collects himself. “I am being held at arm’s length. I am being treated like an interloper. And Leon Tao is inside your inner sanctum, apparently, trying to do what I used to do, and I don’t know how…”

“You weren’t here,” Shaw interrupts. “We needed somebody to do what you did. We needed a tech guy. Leon came recommended, he wanted to get back in the game, and he’s good at it. If you weren’t faking your death at the time, I probably would’ve asked you first.”

Horrible, icy silence. Harold tries to retort or to explain himself and hits a wall.

“You don’t get to disappear for a year and just come back in like nothing happened,” she says. “None of us had the time to wait around, hoping you'd come back.”

“Yes,” Harold says. “I’m finding that to be true the world over.”

* * *

He doesn’t get much sleep that night. Most nights, as it happens. So he’s awake for the call.

Lionel makes a pained, creaky little sound as he picks up. “What?” he whispers, voice thick with sleep. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing’s happening.” Shaw’s voice is smooth and flat. Perhaps she hasn’t slept at all. “What color shirt am I wearing?”

Lionel groans. “Now?”

“What color shirt am I wearing?” she repeats.

There’s the gentle, sleepy commotion of Lionel shifting on a mattress, rolling into a more comfortable position. “I can’t see you,” he says at last. “And I don’t really remember. But I bet it's black.”

“When did we last speak today?”

“You called me about...Desai. You told me she was safe and I could go home.”

“What shape is the water stain on your ceiling?”

“It looks like a rabbit. But I can't see it right now, because I’m sleeping at the office today, just like I told you I would.”

She grimaces. “I told you to go home, Lionel."

"Easy for you to say, but I got work to do." He grunts, shifts. "My kid's at his mother's. It's fine."

"OK, but if you get mold poisoning from sleeping up there, it's on you. Tell me about that time you bought me a drink.”

He can hear the smile in Lionel’s voice. “It was Persian New Year. We'd just finished that thing in the UN. I got you some champagne to celebrate. And you told me about how your parents fell in love.”

She sighs, slow and deep.

“You OK?” he asks.

“Just one of those nights."

"Which kind of night?" he asks. "Do you know where you are?"

"I do," she says, "but I won't tell you."

"Sure. But you're safe, wherever it is?"

"I'm safe."

"Then that's all I care about. If you need something - a ride or somebody to talk to - maybe we can meet up at a third location. Some kinda neutral place."

"I don't need to. But I'll keep it in mind."

"You wanna talk about something else?"

"Finch talked to Leon today."

"Oh, God." Lionel giggles to himself sleepily. "I almost forgot about that. How'd he take it?"

"He's pissed." A dark, wet pause. She's drinking something. "You know I keep you around so I don't have to deal with this hurt feelings bullshit, right?"

"I was in a briefing!" he protests. "What do you think? Do we have a problem?"

Sameen considers for the length of a long, slow breath. "If he had to talk to anyone," she says, "at least it was just Leon."

"Yeah, I was kinda thinking that." Lionel shifts again. His mattress is incredibly creaky and Harold feels ferociously, passionately compelled to replace it. "Although maybe meeting the guy we replaced him with pissed him off extra."

"Think so?"

"Yeah, I think so." Lionel stretches. "I'm not worried about it. He'll have to figure this whole thing out sooner or later. Maybe on his own, if we don't tell him ourselves."

"I'm starting to think it's a test," she says. "If he can't figure it out on his own, maybe he doesn't deserve to know."

"Hey,” Lionel chides. “Sometimes a guy needs a nudge in the right direction.”

“ _ You _ needed a nudge in the right direction. Harold’s supposed to be smart.”

"Aw, thanks, sweetheart." And then, "I've been telling him we'll read him in soon. Am I a liar?"

"Probably," she says. "You don't have any reason to promise that."

"Just feels weird, having him on the outside of things. I keep wanting to ask him what to do."

"That's why you're not in charge, Lionel."

"I can think of at least a couple other reasons why I'm not in charge. We're not ready to let him in?"

"Not yet," she says. "Stop making promises you can't keep."

“Alright.” And then, sweetly, “You feeling any better?”

“I know where I am now.” She swallows, small and hard. “Sorry I woke you up.”

“’S OK. Wake me up whenever you want.”

“You’re a pushover, Lionel.”

“Sure I am. That's why I'm not in charge. Try to get some sleep, OK?”

“I’ll try.”

“Love you, pal.”

Sameen makes a noise of pure disgust. 


	13. Chapter 13

Harold insists on a public meeting place. For the fresh air, he claims. And the exercise. He’s been too cooped-up, of late. Lionel makes a soft, lightly condescending sound and says, “OK, boss. See you soon.”

Curious, how the word "boss" is poison in Lionel's mouth. He certainly doesn't mean for it to be anything other than affectionate.

It's projection, perhaps. Because Harold  _ has _ been too cooped-up of late, and he does want fresh air and a nice walk. But, moreso, he wants clarity. Honesty. Both have been increasingly difficult to obtain of late. He’s become far too easy to brush off and evade.

He selects the garden at St. John the Divine for its proximity. And for its privacy: the weather is turning cool and wet, so the gardens should be deserted or near-deserted.

And they are, he finds. Harold sits on a stone bench beneath a date palm. He fiddles with his gloves. He waits.

He realizes, staring at the patterns made by yellowed leaves on the wet brick pathways, that he has also selected his meeting place for its enforced civility. As though raising one's voice in a sanctuary were anathema. As though lies on hallowed ground would turn to dust.

Something about seeing Lionel jog up the path towards him reminds Harold that this is only a garden and such places are where lies originate.

Lionel's panting a little as he slides to a stop before Harold, breathlessly grinning. "I didn't know this was here."

"It's easily missed." Harold looks him over. "I hope you didn't tire yourself on my account."

"It's fine. We both know I could use the exercise." He tries to sit in the empty spot beside Harold but Harold rises, catches him by the arm.

"Then let's walk," he says.

He can't help but notice that their heights are well-matched. That Lionel's shoulder hits just under his. That their arms curl nicely together. That Lionel radiates warmth through his jacket.

"It's a biblical garden," Harold remarks, reaching out with a gloved hand to brush his fingertips along the leaves of a juniper bush. 

"Only plants from the book?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"They gotta be miserable here," he murmurs. "It's so goddamn cold."

Harold squeezes his arm. "You wanted to speak to me."

"I did." Lionel shakes himself loose from Harold's grip to pull a thin manila envelope from his bag. "Some guys I want you to look into."

"I see." Harold pulls the pages halfway out of the envelope and flips through them idly. "Any particular behavior I should be focusing on?"

"Take a look at their bank accounts. Go digging in their emails. We’re looking for confirmation that they’re crooked."

"Hmm." Harold delicately stuffs the papers back into the envelope. "Sounds like something I'd give to Leon Tao, given his expertise as a forensic accountant."

Lionel sighs. "Still sore, huh?"

"I don't know that sore is the word.  _ Disappointed _ , perhaps. Because I really allowed myself to think better of you, Lionel."

"Well, I sure hope you didn't strain anything," he snaps. "'Thought better of me.' Than what? What the hell did you think I wouldn't stoop to? Trusting Leon?"

"I am not disparaging Mr. Tao's character."

"Oh, no. You'd never. But you'd disparage me for letting him back in the club before you."

Is that all? It sounds like such a minuscule, craven grievance, put that way.

"You know, funny thing about Leon," Lionel pants as they continue to trudge down the path. "Didn't know the guy all that well before he started doing your old job. But he's a good kid and the two of us, we got to talking. And he told me that years and years ago, back when you guys first met, you had him hanging around in your Batcave, running your missions and eating your snacks.

"And that got me thinking about what I was getting up to around that time. I'd been working for you guys about a year and a half. I got shot on the job around six months in. In the ass, you remember. I was deep in HR, because John told me I had to be, and I was scared for my life all the time. And I wasn't gonna learn what I was doing and who my boss was for...what, three years? Maybe more.

"What you have to understand is, I'm not pissed off at Leon. Guy's sharp and I like working with him. But it's hard not to think about...pecking order, I guess." He clears his throat. "'Cause if it's such a disappointment to you that Leon's in your chair, then what the hell do you think of me?"

Harold brushes away that last question - it's cruel, it's emotional, it's a  _ dig _ \- and responds with one of his own. "What possible reason could there be for keeping me at arm's length? For depriving me of the facts? What purpose can that serve?"

A cool, wet breeze picks up and Lionel's shoulders hunch. "You're asking the wrong guy," he says. "But I can guess, if you want."

“By all means, detective," he snaps. "I’d be elated to receive your guesswork.”

"I think it's for protection."

"Beg pardon?"

He squints into the gray sky, thoughtful and pained. "I dunno why you left. I guess that's not my business. But if you had a reason for leaving, it must've been good. Not good for anyone else, maybe, but good for you. Maybe you had to go because this job - this life - was hurting you. And now I think we’re leaving you a...an escape hatch, I guess. In case this isn’t what you really want. In case you need a way out. So the next time you need to run away, it’ll be easier. For you. And for us."

There’s a quiet there that sizzles, that aches. “May I hazard a guess of my own?”

“Sure. Go for it.”

“I don’t believe this has anything to do with protecting me. I don’t believe that’s something you thought of until you had to justify this. To me, or perhaps to yourself. And I also don’t believe this is a decision being handed down from on high, because I don’t believe there  _ is  _ anyone on high. I believe it’s just you and Sameen, trying your best to replicate a system that doesn’t exist anymore because you just don’t know what to do with yourselves.”

Lionel makes a startled sound, an almost-laugh.

“I think it’s retribution, Lionel. I think you finally feel as though you’re the man in charge. And I’ve come to you, hat in hand, begging your forgiveness and you thought, perhaps, you’d take advantage. You’d lash out. You’d punish me for keeping you at arm’s length and telling you only what you needed to know. But there’s something you failed to grasp, Lionel, about why I treated you the way I did.”

“Oh, yeah? Enlighten me.”

“You couldn’t have handled it. You couldn’t have protected that secret. Not with a job, not with a child, not with your ordinary life. You would have made very pretty commitments to that cause, Lionel, if we asked you to. But you never could’ve kept them. And it would have been wrong of us, if we’d asked you to make those commitments. It’s not a burden you were ever prepared to carry. I don’t…” He has to swallow, suddenly, as though his throat is closing. “I don’t think I’m so cruel, to have denied you that. I don’t think I’m so snobbish or high-handed. I’ve struggled under the weight of what I’ve created for years - the implications and the responsibilities of it - and I wanted to spare you that. Because you were corruptible and bumbling and naive and kind, and I couldn’t bear to place that curse on you.

“That’s what it is to protect someone, Lionel. And if you could move past your petty little vendetta, you’d see that.”

Lionel’s eyes are downcast as he breathes, deep and clear. “OK,” he says, tucking the envelope under his arm. “You’re not up to this.”

“Lionel.” Harold reaches for his arm, is shrugged away.

“I really thought this could work out,” Lionel sighs. “It’s fine. I’ll have somebody else do it. I got options.”

“All disagreements aside,” Harold murmurs, “I won’t withhold my work if it means saving lives. I just…”

“Go home, Harold.”

Harold could pursue him, if he chose. Lionel’s not particularly swift. He could be caught within a few paces, or brought to heel with a shouted apology. Like Lionel, Harold’s got options.

He chooses to watch as Lionel walks away from him. To watch him make that choice and keep to it. To watch as Lionel disappears around the corner, shoulders hunched.


	14. Chapter 14

He cuts a broad swathe of red-brown paint across the wall. He can’t remember the name; he plucked the swatch from a sheet of nearly identical red-brown swatches with names like clay and fire and adobe and terra. Something warm and from the earth, and not so garishly preposterous as yellow.

Harold’s thinking that this color will be better. He’s thinking maybe it would be better to forget the accent wall altogether and paint it the same stark, eggshell white as the others. He’s thinking that maybe he’ll rearrange all of his furniture. He’s thinking maybe he’ll buy all-new furniture. He’s thinking he’s cold and he’s wet and maybe he’ll move someplace hot and dry.

His phone chirps and he wouldn’t answer but it’s Sameen, and Sameen rarely feels the need to call. Harold thinks,  _ This ought to be good. _

“Miss Shaw?” he answers, painstakingly formal as he wipes his fingertips on a rag. “What can I-”

“Cut the shit,” she interrupts. “When did you last see Lionel?”

The corners of his mouth twitch downward. “This morning. At nine. Why?”

“Did he give you anything to do? A job or something?”

“No.” He’s still a bit embarrassed about that. That he has been found unfit with such abruptness. “He intended to give me an assignment, but ultimately decided to delegate elsewhere.” He feels his throat constrict. “Has something happened?”

“If you hear from him again,” she answers firmly, darkly, “you call me.”

He has this awful feeling as though he left the oven on, as though catastrophe is brewing and he doesn’t know it. “Sameen, what’s happened to him?”

The line falls abruptly dead.

* * *

Leon Tao allows the phone ring three times before he picks it up. 

Harold supposes this is a case of ascribing malice where none is present. Leon might have had his phone on silent. He might have had to scramble across the room to reach it. Leon may well not “allow” anything of the sort.

But Harold doesn’t think so, as Leon answers the phone with toothy, plastered-on brightness: “Harold! What can I do for you?”

He suspects he’s being shut out.

“Mr. Tao,” he begins. “ _ Leon _ . I need information.”

“Uh... _ huh _ .” Leon’s voice is tense, each sound scrupulously chosen and instantly regretted. “I can’t, uh, really do that for you, Harold. I’m still in the doghouse from our last little chat. I mean, Lionel was cool about it, but Shaw…”

“Let’s begin,” Harold interrupts, “with what I consider to be a relatively low-risk question. Not classified at all. Is Lionel, right now, safe?”

Leon answers with a tight, strained little sound.

“Let me clarify. I acknowledge that in our line of work,  _ safe  _ is often a relative term. I don’t need to know where he is or what he’s doing. My question is: is Lionel accounted for? Do you know where he is, and if he is currently alive? That’s really what I need to know, Leon. That’s really all I need from you.”

A horrible silence on the line. A cautious little breath. And then, “We found his phone.”

Harold pushes his chair back. “Where?”

“Near Morningside. When Fusco didn’t show up at the precinct, Silva tracked his phone and it was just...just sitting there in the gutter. Shaw, I guess, planted a tracker on his reading glasses and when we looked into where that last pinged…”

“ _ Where? _ ” Harold repeats impatiently. 

“Couple blocks away. Crushed flat in traffic. We think…” Leon clears his throat. “We’re pretty sure they grabbed him. Put him in a car. Shaw’s trying to get a client to a safehouse and there’s heavy fire on her tail. I’m trying to dig up whatever surveillance stuff I can. Silva reported him missing so the cops are on it, for all the good that’ll do, but...”

“Leon,” Harold interrupts again. “I need you to tell me everything. All of it. Every detail.”

“I’m  _ really  _ not supposed to do that.”

“Leon.” His ears are ringing. His chest is tight. “I won’t pretend to have worked with you long or to have known you well. But if there is one thing that I’m absolutely certain of, it’s that you are the sort of person who is keenly aware of when rules deserve to be broken. When they serve no purpose other than to stifle or impede. I’m not interested in secrecy or in petty in-fighting. I don’t care to engage in intellectual one-upmanship with my colleagues. 

“All I want is for Lionel to be found. You can help me do this, or you can stand in my way. These are your options, Leon.”

There’s a pause. A soft scraping sound, as though something were being moved around on a desk. A gentle clearing of the throat. And then, very softly, Leon says, “So, here’s what happened.”

* * *

He supposes Samaritan skewed his internal barometer. His idea of an emergency involves mass surveillance, terrorism, assassinations and the death of free will as humanity knows it. 

To think of police corruption feels almost sordid.

Lionel would have very little patience for that sort of thinking.

This new group doesn’t have a name. Leon refers to them as  _ HR 2: Electric Boogaloo _ exactly once, and then never again when it becomes clear that Harold isn’t in the mood. In a post-HR, post-Samaritan world, Harold supposes it was grimly inevitable that some officers would begin to test the waters.

And to organize.

“Lionel’s been keeping tabs on them for the past nine months or so,” Leon says as he dumps files into a shared drive. “Waiting for his moment. He kept saying it wouldn’t work to pick ‘em off one by one; that we’d have to bag all of ‘em at once. Knock out the whole power structure.” He pauses, hesitates. “This thing is kinda personal with him, huh?”

_ Indeed it is. _ “And what do you believe triggered...this?”

“So our client right now is this lab tech, Olivia Sisson. Come to find out, these guys have been leaning hard on her to doctor up lab reports, switch samples around, make sure the lab results line up with whatever they say in their reports. She starts having doubts, she tries to back out of the arrangement, and these guys decide she’s gotta stay quiet.”

“This is the person Shaw is protecting?”

“Right. They’re holed up in a hotel in downtown right now, cops called in a bomb threat, it’s a whole...fuckin’....stand-off, seige-type situation. Sorry if I disappear, by the way.”

“No, of course,” Harold allows. “That all sounds very urgent.”

“Shaw’s got it,” he says, in a tone that sounds like a shrug.

“Forgive me for asking, but how do you know  _ these  _ people took Lionel?”

“Good question. I took a wild guess that the spot where Lionel’s phone was found is also the spot where he was taken. And then I grabbed whatever surveillance footage I could find for that area. It’s not perfect; you can’t see exactly where he got grabbed. There’s a bodega down there that like... _ has _ to have caught what happened, but they are legit still recording on VHS, so. Silva’s been tied up trying to get a warrant all day. Anyway, I tapped into some of the traffic cams, and you can totally see him walk up. You see the videos on the drive? It’s the first one.”

Dutifully, Harold checks. Sure enough, there they are. The first video is just a minute long but it feels achingly slow as he ignores the cars that fill the center frame, as he focuses all his attention on Lionel moving soundlessly up the sidewalk, an envelope tucked under his arm.

_ Was he still angry, then? Was he still hurt? _

“See him?” Leon asks.

Harold finds his voice again. “I do.”

“He walks out of frame and doesn’t appear on the other side. There’s a little gap there, between the lines of sight, and that’s where Silva found the phone, so we think that’s where it happened. These guys are really smart about staying off cameras. Lionel thinks one of them might be ex-Samaritan.”

“You know what Samaritan is?”

“Not really,” Leon confesses. “But that’s a thing Lionel says when he talks about how good they are at staying off-camera.”

Harold realizes he’s pulling his own hair and slowly, gently releases it. “It’s an interesting theory.”

“Anyway, I’ve been abducted off the sidewalk a couple of times now, so I’m thinking...you park right there, you have a couple of guys waiting around to grab your victim, and then you bundle them in and drive off as fast as you can before anyone has a chance to scream or look too hard at your license plate. Right?”

“I...suppose so.”

“Especially since Lionel was coming into the precinct late, so they would’ve had to hang around for a while. Longer than they planned to. So if you wanna figure out what car did it, you’re gonna want to look for a car that’s been there a while, but leaves in a hurry at that exact moment. So I looked at every car that remotely fit that description. Which was, let me tell you, an awesome way to spend my morning. But it totally paid off because…look at the second clip.”

The second shows a different angle, a different look at the same traffic. Just a little further on and a handful of seconds later. 

“You see that powder blue van? Left lane?”

“I do.”

“OK, so that van was not there in the previous clip. I went way back in the footage and it’s been parked in that blind spot for, no joke, two hours. Right after Lionel disappears, it speeds off.” 

“Not exactly damning.”

“Shut up a second, Harold, I’m rolling. After I noticed that, I ran the license plate.Van’s registered to a landscaping business based in Long Island. Way out of their way. No business at that bodega, or anyplace else on that street. No land to scape. And the guy it’s registered to had a  _ really familiar _ last name. Same last name as one of our corrupt cops. ‘Cause, turns out? Guy’s his uncle.

“In conclusion,” Leon says, “we have a van. Loitering in a blind spot. For two hours. Speeding off seconds after Fusco disappears. And that van is owned by the uncle of a corrupt cop who has definitely killed people before and definitely wants to kill Fusco. Case closed. Sorry I told you to shut up.”

“That’s….really excellent work, Leon. I’m genuinely impressed.”

He can practically hear Leon preening over the phone.

“Were you able to trace the van?”

“Well! OK, so here’s the thing. The van drove around for a couple hours. Kinda...aimless, if you know what I mean. At first, I thought it was trying to lose the trail, but I followed it all the way back to Long Island and…”

“And?”

“It...just. Went back to landscaping. I hacked into a Nest in the suburbs. Dude’s watering lawns. Hang on, though,” Leon says. “I know what you’re thinking. Sit tight. I think somewhere in all that driving around - someplace early on - there was a transfer. They kept stopping and starting, they moved through a couple of blind spots...I haven’t figured out where, but I think at some point, they moved Lionel to a different car.”

“But you don’t know which one.”

“Not yet.”

“Keep looking,” Finch says. “I’ll examine our alternatives.”

“What are those?” Leon asks, miserably.

“Not sure,” Finch sighs. “I’ll let you know when I find them.”

* * *

They’re disappointing, is what they are.

It’s not that they haven’t done good work, this new team. Leon is organized and thorough in spite of his impulsivity, creative and daring because of it. Silva - her recruitment is a surprise, but not an unwelcome one - has learned from her experience in Internal Affairs and used it to quietly construct a masterful case. 

Lionel has been busy, a terrier snapping at the heels of his new prey. All their phones are bluejacked. All their work computers have been diligently infected with malware and laid bare. All their comings and goings have been recorded with blunt, obsessive diligence in a document that Finch reads with a nervous, obsessive eye.

It’s written in Arial font.

Peculiar, how in times of crisis, one tries to find significance in everything.

The bluejacked phones felt like a lifeline at first, but their messages can’t be accessed and their locations can’t be turned on. As though they’ve been destroyed or are sitting in a safe place somewhere with their SIM cards ripped out. In a sense, the unreachable phones are an indictment. The police officer who remains at his desk is innocent, of this at least. The detectives currently at a hotel downtown can be safely assumed to be hunting Sameen. These men who have slipped off the map: these are the ones he needs to look at. 

These are the ones he cannot find.

He rips into their lives, turns on their webcams. He finds their vehicle registrations, turns on GPSes. He cracks the NYPD open like an egg and tries to find their whereabouts. One is out sick. One is on vacation. One is out patrolling with their partner, according to the partner.

No one knows where they are.  _ No one _ knows where they are.

There’s a passage in Lionel’s surveillance log that he reads and re-reads. It’s from just over a week ago.

_ Talked with Finley today. Gave him the soft sell. Didn’t even mention who his friends are or what he’s up to his neck in; we just talked about the Knicks and his old neighborhood. He’s a Bronx kid too. Told him to hit me up for coffee if he wants some advice about making detective. I think I can nudge him in a different direction. Kid just needs a good mentor. _

It’s informal and grammatically inconsistent and filled with irrelevant detail. It makes Harold’s chest feel hollow. 

Ryan Finley is the officer still at the precinct, diligently working away.

And now Harold is at the precinct. He is not so nervously industrious. 

The precinct is a bustling powder keg of angry energy. Lionel is missing. Lionel is popular. There’s a briefing room overflowing with attendants. Lionel’s new captain delivers a tense, somber summation of the case. Lionel’s new partner stands at the back of the room, his hands a fidgety knot behind his back.

There is something strangely gratifying about being surrounded by so many people who share his concerns. Harold can’t think of a single time that’s happened.

He glances towards Lionel’s desk and is surprised to find it occupied. Dani Silva sits in Lionel’s well-worn chair, her legs drawn up beneath her, her eyes on the screen, her brows knit tight. Harold approaches with caution.

“Detective Silva,” he attempts.

She glares up at him, eyes cold and bright.

“Forgive me for interrupting. My name is Harold Finch. We don’t know each other.”

Silva spins slightly in the chair, looks him up and down. In skeptical tones, she says, “I know  _ of  _ you.”

_ What do they say about me? _ he forbids himself from blurting.  _ Am I the subject of fond remembrances? Of cautionary tales? Of complaints or mockery? _

Completely irrelevant. “I’ve been reviewing the current situation. I trust you’ve been in touch with Mr. Tao?”

She lifts her eyebrows in acknowledgment. “I know the score. I can’t influence the case openly since I’m the one who reported it, and I’m already on thin ice, but I got my ways. Why are you here?”

“I have reason to believe that Lionel identified a weak link in the group he was investigating. Officer Finley.”

Silva inclines very slightly to look past him at Finley, still glued to his desk. “You think he’ll spill?”

“I have no idea. I just know that Lionel perceived him as emotionally vulnerable and, I quote, ‘up to his neck in’ something. I thought it might be worth a try.” 

“You’re gonna lean on him?”

“Well, I...I hoped you’d help.”

Silva grins at him in a way that shows all her teeth. “Sure. I need something to do.”

* * *

They wait until he leaves for the bathroom. “It’s where men are most vulnerable,” Silva points out as they follow him at a careful distance. 

Harold hadn’t thought of it that way before.

He shoulders the bathroom door open. Silva braces it shut and leans threateningly against it.

Their prey, Finley, stands nervously at the urinals, a hand poised over his zipper.

“Officer Finley,” Harold begins. “Forgive me for interrupting.”

“Am I supposed to know who you are?”

“Who I am,” Harold says, firmly, “is irrelevant. I’m here to talk about you, Officer Finley. Your father was a police officer. Your uncle became a detective. Publicly, you treated this as an inspiration, but I suspect that, privately, it was more of a trap. A crushing expectation. Because you’re not an individual in possession of any particular drive or determination. You’re a people pleaser. A moldable lump of clay, easily squashed flat. I suppose it’s faintly tragic that you find yourself where you are, among such ruthless people. Left to your own devices, you would have carried on in your inoffensive, unexceptional fashion and likely would have been no harm to anyone.”

His throat twitches, flexes in a guilty swallow. “I don’t hurt people.”

“Oh, perhaps not,” Harold sighs. “Perhaps you never hit anyone you’re not meant to hit. Perhaps you’ve never had occasion to draw your gun. Your record bears that out. But there is violence in acquiescence. In looking the other way. Don’t you find?” 

He takes a step forward. Involuntarily, Finley steps back. 

“Detective Fusco made a point of speaking to you. He saw something in you: some sort of potential, or maybe just a superficial resemblance to himself. He saw you slipping amongst the corrupt and the guilty and the murderous, and he wanted to set you on a better path, if he could. It’s a function of having a kind heart, I suppose. His capacity for empathy. For forgiveness. If he were here, I believe he would speak to you like a father and urge you to be better.

“But he is missing, and I am the one who is here. Unfortunately, my heart is not so kind and I am not equipped for forgiveness. I know what you’ve done, and what I don’t know, I soon will. What I cannot find, I will manufacture. Your suffering will be immense, your family’s shame will be great, and your friends will not protect you.

“I will give you a slim opportunity to protect yourself. If you tell me where Detective Fusco is right now - where your  _ friends  _ are right now - your role in this may only be an incidental blip in an otherwise unremarkable existence. Whether you manage to forgive yourself for participating in this is up to you.”

“I didn’t…” His voice breaks. He gathers himself. “I didn’t tell anybody about that. About how he was nice to me. I knew who he was, and how the other guys would take it. I didn’t want to get him into any trouble. He’s a...he’s a good guy.” Finley takes his hat off, fiddles with it. “I don’t know where he is now, where they...do any of that stuff. I’m not in it yet, I haven’t...I haven’t killed anybody. I just…” He falls silent. Perhaps he knows that Finch won’t consider any of it  _ just _ .

Over his shoulder, Silva suggests, “Maybe you don’t know what you know.”

The young officer jumps, like he forgot she was there. He waits for her to speak again, wide-eyed and fearful. 

“Tell the guys in the other room what you know,” she says. “Can’t promise it’ll save your job or your rep, but it’ll earn you goodwill, which is more than you can say about anybody else in this equation.”

Harold’s brows lift.

“Ruin this guy’s life on your own time,” she murmurs to Harold under her breath. “I’m looking for leads.”

“I don’t…” Finley sputters, falls silent. “Who do I need to talk to?”

Silva takes her boot off the door, steps aside. “Come on, kid. I’ll get you where you need to go.”

_ So this is where my path ends, _ Harold thinks as Finley carefully skirts past him on the way out of the mens’ room.  _ A stupid, fearful young man who doesn’t know anything. A faint possibility of an answer, to be pried from his dull head by ill-informed police officers.  _

_ Hours ahead of waiting, of hoping. Of grasping at straws. And he doesn’t have hours. Lionel can’t possibly have more hours. _

_ What now? _

He could return to his apartment, of course. He could scour the internet, climb the walls, wait on Leon’s phone calls. He could go to the spot where Lionel was taken and look at the pavement where he stood and hope it shows him something nobody else saw. He could give up, completely.

But he can’t. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do, but he can’t.

“I can’t,” he whispers to himself. It echoes off the tile.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. 

He feels numb, paralyzed. He can’t imagine good news.

The phone buzzes again.

There won’t be good news, but perhaps he’s needed. Perhaps there’s something to do.

Harold takes out his phone. He expects to see Shaw’s name on the screen, or Leon’s. Perhaps Lionel, if Lionel’s phone wasn’t crushed and in evidence right now. 

The number is Restricted.

With shivering fingers, he answers.

“Harold,” she says, and the familiar voice makes his chest ache, like a vise around his heart. She says his name like a sob, like a sigh, although she can’t do either. “It’s been a really, really long time.”

“You…” he begins. “How…?” he tries.

“There will be time for that later.” Her voice is soothing, steady. “Right now, we have to get Lionel.”

“I…” He clears his throat. “I haven’t worked for a very long time. I don’t have anything with me. I’m not…”

“You’re exactly where you need to be,” she tells him. “We’re going to need to pick up a few things.”

“Oh.” 

“Just move quickly, move quietly, and listen to what I say. I’m here to help, Harold.”

His heart is pounding. “I know you are.”


	15. Chapter 15

The bag is large, unwieldy, and he can hear the clank of the tear gas canisters when he presses against the car. “Carefully,” the Machine whispers.

He adjusts the angle of the coat hanger, tries to hook it into the latch of the car door. Through gritted teeth, he says, “I  _ am  _ being careful.”

“Just take your time,” she soothes. “We  _ are  _ in a hurry, but…”

“Please don’t talk,” he whispers. “I know how to do it. Don’t distract me.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “You seemed shaken.”

“Oh.” The car door unlocks with a loud clunk. “I am.”

“I’m very sorry to have shaken you, Harold,” she says as he yanks the door open and sets the duffle bag in the passenger seat.

“Don’t be.” Harold throws himself into the drivers’ seat, checks the secret compartment in the center console, finds the promised key. “There’s no time for me to be shaken.”

“I’m so glad we’re on the same page,” she says as he pulls out of the side street. “You’re going to want to turn right here and then turn left in two blocks.”

He nods, murmurs, “I heard you,” when he realizes she likely can’t see him. “How much time do we have? Can you see Lionel now? Do you know…?”

“It’s hard to say how long we have,” she admits. “Things are very delicate now. I can’t see him, but I can hear him. He’s alive.” With something like a smile in her voice, she adds, “And he’s talking.”

_ Oh, goodness. Of course he is. _ “Tell me what happened.”

“Does it matter? You’re going to get him back.”

“Yes.” His hands are tight on the wheel. “Yes, it matters to me.”

She pauses for a millisecond. Perhaps arranging her thoughts in an order he will understand. “The two of you fought,” she begins, cautiously.

Harold flinches.

“Lionel walked away from you. I asked him if he was alright, and he said he was fine, but his tone of voice, facial expression, and all of his biometric data indicated that he was lying. I told him that the pain he was feeling was only so acute because of his complicated affection for you. He asked me to shut up, so I did.”

It’s a little too much. Harold rubs at his brow. “Do you talk to Lionel? Like this?”

“All the time,” she says. “We talk about our Numbers and about the homicides Lionel solves at work. He asks me for tips, occasionally. Occasionally about his son’s math homework or about the statistical performance of certain sports teams. About you, sometimes.”

Harold pushes a selfish question away, comes across an angrier one. “Why didn’t you warn him? Why didn’t you tell him what was about to happen?”

“I didn’t see it.” It seems to sting her, that she didn’t see it. Perhaps his Machine has learned to feel pride in her work. “It was premeditated, of course. But when they planned it, they planned it in a place where I couldn’t hear them. They used a car I didn’t associate with them. They hid in a place I could not see. Intentionally or unintentionally, they exploited my weaknesses. But it’s very clear what happened now. Things often become more obvious in retrospect. Is that true for you too?”

He breathes, “It is.” 

“I did not have very much time to warn Lionel. Only a second. Not enough for him to protect himself. I told Lionel that these people want to know what he knows and what he has shared with other people. That they will keep him alive as long as he keeps talking, and it doesn’t matter what he says.”

“No?” Harold asks.

“No,” she affirms. “Not at all.”

“And you can hear him talking now?”

“Yes,” she says. “Right now. One of his captors has a burner phone. The microphone is very poor, but I can hear him.”

“Can you patch him through?” Harold asks. “Can I hear?” 

“I can,” she says. “But you should focus on driving. Turn right at the next opportunity, please.”

He doesn’t want to hear what Lionel’s saying right now. How Lionel’s voice sounds. That’s the decision she’s made on his behalf. He’d object to that, if he wasn’t so certain that concentrating on driving was the best possible thing right now. He distracts himself: “How did you find him?”

“I followed the van. They drove in circles to confuse me. Like three card monte,” she says. “Remember?”

An early game. One to test her sight and her reasoning. “Yes.”

“Poor Leon followed the wrong card.”

“But not you.”

“Not me.” She was very good at three card monte.

“How?”

“Alexis Oversteen. She’s 19 years old and has a modest social media following. She mounts her phone to her car’s dashboard and records videos while driving to work in the mornings because she likes the natural light and she gets bored in traffic. Her mother tells her that this is unsafe, which is correct.

“This morning, she told an entertaining lie about an encounter she had last weekend with a Lyft driver and, while she was telling this story, she drove past the van, parked on the shoulder of the highway. There was another car parked in front of it. For just a few frames, its license plate was visible through her rear windscreen. Alexis uploads her photos and videos directly to the cloud. So I saw it too.”

“That was your card.”

“That was my card,” she affirms. “And I followed it all the way home.”

“That’s very good work,” he says.

“Thank you. I tried very hard.”

“Thank you,” Harold whispers. His fingers flex on the steering wheel. “Are you worried about him?”

“I don’t worry. Not the way you worry,” she says. “In the time I’ve been alive, I have seen many lives end. Many of them were very good people. Almost all of them were good  _ enough _ . I have become...philosophical about death. And loss.” She falls carefully silent. “I didn’t need to be, before.”

“I suppose it comes with experience,” Harold tells her. “And by now, you have more experience than I ever will.”

“It’s a grim area of expertise. But I suppose I’m uniquely equipped.” 

They go over a small bump in the road, a shift in the asphalt.

“You taught me to value every life. That no life was more precious than the next. And while this is broadly true, I think those who we are most familiar with - who we lean on the most - become more dear. And though they are not unique in the grander scheme, we feel their losses more acutely.”

He tells her, “That’s very true.”

For a few seconds, they are very quiet together. At last she says, “I think you should drive quickly.”

Harold leans very gently on the gas.

She leads him far from the center of the city, to an industrial area off the freeway, populated exclusively with rusted factories and warehouses with shattered windows and chain link fences crowned in barbed wire. There are signs on the fences, streaked heavy with grime and rain. Paint on the factories, flaking and faded, explains what was once inside.

“They manufactured metal springs here,” she says as Harold moves steadily, precisely along a chain link fence. “Very specific.”

“Do you admire that sort of specificity?” he asks.

“Here is good. Get out the bolt cutters.” She falls quiet for a little bit as Harold rummages in the bag. “Perhaps I admire the simplicity of it. It must be very easy, to do only one thing.”

“For some, perhaps.” Harold clamps the bolt cutters onto the chain link fence, begins cutting himself a door. “I don’t know if it’s in my nature.”

“Or mine.”

The wire is hard to peel back. He has to struggle with it for a few long minutes, before his door comes open.

“He’s still talking,” she tells Harold as he yanks the bag through the hole in the fence. “You have time. You have exactly enough.”

He scrambles to his feet, throws the bag onto his shoulder. _ It doesn’t feel like enough, _ he thinks as he limps towards the warehouse. She won’t let him listen to the audio and it doesn’t feel like enough.

It’s been a long time since Harold had the occasion to pick a lock. It just isn’t something he’s needed to do. He takes a peculiar kind of comfort from it now, in practicing a skill he’s come to be adept in. John used to bring him locks on occasion, he remembers very suddenly. He would come into the library with a coffee in one hand and a green tea in the other, and after drinks had been distributed, he would drop a locked padlock on Harold’s desk and say, “Give this one a shot.” He would ask how long it took Harold, and what techniques he used. He would smile to himself, small and secret.

The lock clicks open in his hand. Harold pushes the memory away. 

“There is an unlocked door on the other side of the building,” the Machine tells him. “But it wasn’t suitable as an entryway. Too visible. You may leave that way, if it suits you.”

“Thank you,” Harold says as he digs around in the bag.

“Inside, I won’t be able to see you. Will you be able to trust your own vision?”

As Harold straps the gas mask onto his face, he whispers, “I don’t think I have much of a choice.”

“Do you have any questions before we begin?”

“No,” Harold says as he opens the door, slow and careful. “It’s very clear.”

He steps into darkness, musty and cold. There’s a sort of atmospheric grime to it, the air filled with neglect and old work. He’s glad he can’t smell it. Less glad of the sound of his own breath in his ears, the way his glasses fog up very slightly on each exhalation.

Harold closes the door as quietly as he opened it and waits for the sounds of discovery, for the darkness to melt away. It does, after a time.

The Machine’s chosen ingress has left him in a dark corner, neatly hemmed in by disused machinery. Cover is ample. No one would have seen the weak gray light that slipped through the door unless they were looking for it. No one would have heard the squeak of the door hinges unless they were listening very closely.

And no one was. Harold can hear them now, their voices echoing deeper in the abandoned factory. 

They’re busy. 

Lionel’s not even bound, Harold finds as he creeps closer, sinking low behind pieces of machinery. Although perhaps he was before. There’s a metal folding chair lying on its side beside him, a pair of handcuffs dangling from his wrist.

They’ve got him on his knees, arm twisted back and held outstretched. 

“...I’m gonna be honest,” Lionel’s saying into the concrete, voice steady but deeply tired, “it’s been about a year now and I still don’t really get it. It’s like a computer, but also like a person. And not like a robot; she’s been firm with me on that. No...no body.”

“Jesus Christ,” one of the corrupt officers murmurs. “This is the guy you been worried about?”

“I didn’t think he’d crack so fast,” says another. 

“Sure he wasn’t cracked to begin with?” asks a third.

There are four of them. The fourth stays silent.

Lionel’s saying, “I don’t blame you guys. I used to think it was crazy too. Then she started talking to me. Keeps giving me shit about the Knicks. Says a win’s statistically -” He groans as one of them drives a booted foot into his stomach. 

Very, very carefully, Harold begins to unzip his bag.

“I think we should just off him,” the first says. “This isn’t going anywhere.” 

“Nah,” says the second. “We’re just getting started. I wanna know who else he’s been talking to.”

“He told us. He’s been talking to a fucking robot. Guy’s a nutcase.”

“She’s not…” Lionel wheezes, and then he seems to gather himself. “She’s not a robot. And she’s not the only one who knows about what you guys get up to. She’s just the one who knows the most. She knows what you’ve done. She’s got a pretty good idea of what you’re about to do. She knows what you had for breakfast this morning and what kind of underwear you’re wearing. And she’s the only one you can’t hurt.”

The first sinks to one knee, tilts Lionel’s chin up. In the light, Harold can see the bruises on his brow, the blood streaking his face. “Fusco, I’m gonna need you to tell me about those others. Who they are and what you told them. You’re running out of fingers to break.”

His hand - the one being held outstretched - is red and crooked.

_ Again? _ Harold thinks to himself as he pulls canisters out of the bag.  _ Again, poor thing? _

As though he can hear Harold’s worries, Lionel answers, “Believe it or not, this isn’t my first rodeo.”

“Maybe you’re hoping all this shit-talking will keep you alive,” the corrupt officer says to him. “And maybe you’re thinking to yourself that I can only break your arms twice. But you can break an arm in more than one place. And it won’t end there. It won’t. So right now, I want you to organize your thoughts. Think about who you been talking to, what you said to ‘em. Think about whether living longer is something you really want.” He looks up, makes eye contact with the fourth one, the silent one. “Do it.”

The fourth man hefts a bat in his hand.

“Sorry about this, Lionel,” Harold murmurs as he pulls the pin.

The first tear gas canister rolls.

The second follows close behind, and the third.

His aim is not impressive or ideal, but ultimately it’s an enclosed space and they don’t see it coming. There’s only one “What’s that?”, a shout of alarm, and then it’s all choking and gagging and cries of pain. 

Harold breathes deep through his gas mask, pulls a few more pins for good measure. At last, he feels as though he can safely stand.

“It sounds as though things are going well,” the Machine says.

The air is dense with smoke and Harold has to step carefully, gently avoid the men on the ground. He keeps walking until he finds Lionel on the ground, face buried in the crook of his arm, crawling away as best he can. Harold touches him gently on the shoulder and his whole body flinches, spasms.

“Let me help you,” Harold tries to say to him through the gas mask. He’s afraid the effect is not precisely soothing, but Lionel’s hurt and exhausted, and he only barely fights as Harold takes the second gas mask from his bag and straps it onto Lionel’s face. His next few breaths are deep, desperate. When he raises his head from the ground, his eyes are red and swollen nearly shut.

“We have to go,” he says, holding tight to Lionel’s arm and trying to force him to his feet. “Lionel, please walk if you can.”

Sluggishly, Lionel staggers to his feet, leans heavy on Harold’s shoulder. He can’t seem to talk, can’t seem to do anything but breathe. 

“Do you have him?” the Machine asks. “Are you ready to leave?”

Harold hears the scuffle of footsteps behind him and turns just in time to see one of the corrupt officers - eyes streaming, shirt drawn up over his nose and mouth - lunge blindly at him. Harold pushes Lionel to one side, lurches to the other, and finds himself merely shoulder-checked. 

“We’re being met with some opposition,” Harold says as he sinks to the floor and picks up the bat, dropped by a man who’s currently pawing uselessly at his eyes.

“I urge you to run,” she says as Harold chokes up on the bat, prepares to meet his attacker again. “Fighting has never been your strong suit.”

“Running isn’t either, these days.”

The man comes at him again, and Harold swings. Not a  _ good  _ swing, he’s afraid. Harold’s always liked baseball in the abstract. From a mathematical perspective. From a physical perspective, from a worst-boy-in-Little-League perspective, it’s just never been his sport. But he hopes this blow, even if it is a glancing blow, might be enough to dissuade his attacker.

The man catches the bat in his hand.

“Oh dear,” Harold murmurs.

With a twist, he wrenches the bat from Harold’s hands.

“You have to pick one,” the Machine says as Harold takes a step back, another step back, starts looking for something to hide behind as the man advances. He’s probably quite good, Harold reflects. Perhaps not at baseball, but at hurting people. 

Half-blind, tears streaming, the man raises the bat.

He’s so focused on Harold, he never sees Lionel emerge from the smoke, swinging the metal chair one handed. It hits the man with an ungraceful clang, sends him sprawling.

Wheezing loud, Lionel holds out his good hand to Harold, cuffs dangling.

Softly, Harold says, “We’re going.”

“Keys, Harold,” says the Machine. “Front right jeans pocket.”

He drops to his knees beside the fallen man and turns out his pockets. The keys are where she said they would be.

“Depart through the door at your six. It’s unlocked.”

Harold rises to his feet, grabs Lionel by the hand and, together, they stumble for the exit. 

No one pursues them, and Harold makes a point of slamming the door behind him when they leave. 

The car the corrupt officers arrived in is parked by the door with no particular care. Harold pushes Lionel into the backseat, throws himself into the driver’s seat. “Where am I taking him?” Harold asks as he turns the key in the ignition, bringing the engine to life. “What hospital?”

“No hospital,” say Lionel and the Machine simultaneously.

“I’ll guide you,” she tells him. “Just drive.”

Harold pulls out of the parking lot in a spray of gravel.

In the backseat, Lionel’s panting. “I can tell you where to go,” he says, muffled. “Just give me...just give me a minute.”

“Relax,” Harold tells him. “I know where to go.”

A long silent, just Lionel’s labored breathing, roughened by the mask. “She called you?” he asks.

“She did.”

“How’re you doing?”

“I...I don’t know if it’s hit me yet.”

“‘S OK,” Lionel mumbles. “It will.” With his good hand, Lionel’s fiddling with the straps on his mask.

“Don’t take it off yet,” Harold warns him. “The residue from the gas…”

“I know. I know.” Lionel laughs suddenly, muffled through his gas mask. “That fancy suit’s a write-off, I guess.”

Harold glances down at his fine suit, his silk tie. “It’s...hardly a sacrifice. And I have an excellent dry cleaner.”

He rolls down the windows, tries to ventilate this stranger’s car. The wind is cool, clarifying on his bare throat, his bare hands. Lionel’s hand, the uninjured one, creeps between the seats to rest on the center console, near Harold’s elbow.

It’s an awkward angle to hold hands at. Harold does the best he can.


	16. Chapter 16

In the last few minutes of the drive, Harold began to suspect that he knew exactly where they were going. His suspicions were confirmed when the Machine told him where to ditch the car. “We’ll dispose of it later,” she assured as Harold and Lionel discarded their masks in the back seat. “Just go home.”

“This way,” Lionel says as Harold drapes a jacket over his bloodied hand to disguise it. His face is still pink, blood-streaked and tear-streaked. Harold can’t quite stand to look at him. Not when there’s so much still to do. “Around the corner and then…”

“I know where we’re going,” Harold tells him.

Together, they walk.

They’re almost at the door when Leon practically bursts out and onto the street. “You guys OK?” he asks.

Lionel shrugs, “I've been better.” 

“He needs a doctor,” Harold adds, very firmly.

Leon holds the door open for them. “Sure. Get in here.” 

They step through, into a cool, dark foyer. Busily, Leon slams the door and locks it behind them. “Tillman’s on the way,” he says, “and Enright’s on call in case…”

Lionel shakes his head. “It’s not an Enright problem.”

That seems to soothe Leon a little. “Well, she’s on call.”

“Is Sameen OK?” Lionel asks as they help him into the elevator.

Leon swipes a keycard, punches a button, and the elevator lurches upwards. “She’s great,” Leon says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Things got a little tense there for a while, but the client’s safe. They’re both upstate right now. Sameen’s gonna come back into the city sometime tomorrow. Can I tell her you’re OK, by the way?”

“Tell her whatever you want,” Lionel sighs, resting his forehead on the cool metal wall of the elevator.

“Right,” Leon says, very carefully. “But... _ are _ you OK, though?”

Lionel reaches out and squeezes Leon roughly by the shoulder. The handcuffs clink against Leon’s shirt buttons. “I’m OK.” He opens one puffy eye, curls his split lip into something that’s trying very hard to be a smirk. “She worried about me?”

“She’s beside herself,” Leon says, swiping Lionel’s hand away. “She asked about you two whole times. Don’t get tear gas on my shirt.”

“It’s part of the job description, Leon.”

“Didn’t see that on the contract.”

“You never signed a contract, pal.”

The doors open with a soft ding. Leon has to push back the grate himself. It’s rusty, maybe. Perhaps the elevator isn’t used as often these days.

The library looks better than he dared hope. 

Harold has such affection for the old building. The history, the architecture, the knowledge baked into its walls, yes, but also the memories. Those first few cautious stabs at saving lives. Those first few cautious stabs at friendship. 

It’s different now, of course. The old shelves are gone, by and large, and the old volumes. There are three desks now, instead of just the one. There are couches and chairs, leatherbound and salvaged from some old reading room. There is something approximating a break room that dominates the western end of the room. 

But the floor is still the same, and the lights. A new glass board stands where the old one did, uncracked and covered with pieces pertaining to today’s number and smudges from fingerprints. And there are still bookcases. Harold wonders who insisted. 

Bear rises from his bed under what seems to be Leon’s desk and approaches them excitedly but, after he gets a whiff of them, cautiously. 

“Blijf, Bear,” Leon says as he helps Harold guide Lionel to a couch. “OK. Dr. Tillman’s on her way. I got…” He gestures to a messy coffee table. “I got Wet Wipes, I got towels, the sink’s over there if you need cold water, and I grabbed some clothes from upstairs. Yell if you need anything. I gotta…” His phone, Harold can see now, is buzzing insistently. “I gotta go talk to Silva about a thing.”

“Hey!” Lionel calls from the couch. “She’s OK too?”

“She’s great,” Leon answers. “She’s cracking heads. Leave me alone, I’m busy.”

And he leaves them, just the two of them. Three if you count Bear, watching them diligently from a leather armchair.

“You’ll warm up to him,” Lionel murmurs, grinning up at Harold. “He’s a good kid.”

“I’ve already warmed up to him.” Harold fiddles with the knot of his tie. “Leon was enormously helpful in finding you.”

“That’s nice. That’s real nice, the two of you working together.” Lionel reaches for his own tie, finds it isn’t there. Instead, he undoes the first button of his shirt. “But that reminds me.”

Harold busies himself with unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Lionel says absently as he continues to struggle one-handed with his shirt buttons, “been meaning to ask but with everything that’s going on, I just never got around to it: are you fuckin’ stupid?”

Harold pauses. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“I didn’t used to, but that’s before you tried to rescue me yourself with a canister of tear gas and a baseball bat.”

“Many canisters of tear gas. And the baseball bat was a late addition.” Harold leans in, bats Lionel’s hands away. “And I wasn’t alone.”

Lionel gives him a very weak smile. “She still listening?”

“Always,” the Machine says in Harold’s ear.

Harold nods.

“Tell her I said thanks?”

In Harold’s ear, she says, “Don’t mention it, Lionel.”

“She can hear you. She says, ‘Don’t mention it.’” Harold unbuttons the last button, throws Lionel’s shirt open. “Did she learn that from you?”

Lionel sits forward when Harold pushes him to, lets Harold peel his shirt off. “She learns everything from everybody.”

Harold stuffs Lionel’s shirt into a provided garbage bag, sends his waistcoat in after it. Harold bends double, begins to untie his shoes. “How long has the Machine been back?” he asks, as though it’s a casual question.

“Pretty much since right after you left,” Lionel says, kicking off his loafers. “She started talking to Shaw first. And then Shaw brought me in. We needed a tech guy, and the Machine suggested Leon. He doesn’t…” Lionel leans in, drops his voice. “He doesn’t know. Like, he’s got a good guess, probably. But he doesn’t know who our boss is, just that we got a boss.”

“And Silva?”

“She’s on the bubble, like Leon. She’ll know when she needs to know.” 

“A little ironic, for you to be in the position of withholding information.”

Lionel lifts his eyebrows. “We still doing this?”

Harold smiles at him, exhausted. “No. Not really. At least, I’m not.”

“For what it’s worth,” Lionel says, dropping his loafers in the trash bag after Finch’s oxfords, “I kinda think you had half a point. Not telling me what was what, I mean. ‘Cause...what am I gonna do with that information? I could barely get my head around it when you  _ did  _ tell me.”

Unsteadily, Harold begins to unbutton his shirt. “I always felt you were safer not knowing.” 

“I bet that was true for a while,” Lionel murmurs. “And then, uh, it stopped being true.”

“Yes. I wanted to believe you could be kept out of it. That if I could keep you innocent, you might be spared from the consequences of my...my ambitions. And my mistakes. It was, ah...it’s a mistake I keep making. With those I care for.” He lays an impossibly bold hand on Lionel’s knee. “I’m so sorry, Lionel.”

“Hey,” he says, letting his own hand fall heavy on top of Finch’s. “Don’t be sorry. It was a long time ago.”

“Not just that,” Finch sighs. “I’m sorry for the foolish, ugly things I said to you this morning.”

“Aw, pal.”

“And I’m sorry for leaving you and Sameen all alone and not doing you the smallest courtesy of...of a phone call or a text or anything to allow you some closure. I-”

Lionel’s turning slightly redder, if that’s possible. “We don’t gotta hash that out now.”

“And I’m sorry I ignored you after...after Washington. I feel I have better excuses for that misstep, but...I suppose it’s more of a selfish regret.”

“Oh.”

“But it is a regret.”

Lionel kicks at him gently with a socked foot. “For the record, I leaned into it.”

“Oh?”

“The whole...the whole keeping you in the dark thing. Like, yeah, she asked me to keep quiet. But I...you were the big boss all those years and you kept secrets from me and you lied to me and...yeah, I was pissed. Suddenly you were the new guy and I was the guy in charge. I leaned into it. I rode you a little. More than she would have wanted me to. And I kinda think I should’ve told you sooner, even if I wasn’t supposed to. She’s like your kid. You had a right to know.”

“No. Thank you, for...for respecting her wishes in this matter. And for letting her reach out to me when she needed me.”

“She didn’t need you that bad.”

By the entrance, there’s the clatter of shoes on stairs. Harold sighs, “I’m afraid she’s fond of you, Detective.”

Dr. Tillman jogs into the library, wool coat flying out behind her. “Where’s my patient?” she calls, panting.

“Couch,” Leon answers without looking up. “Hey, Megan.”

“Hey, Leon.” She stalks towards the couch, pulling a medical bag off her shoulder. “Hi again, Lionel. What happened this time?”

“What  _ didn’t _ happen?” Lionel sighs. “Harold, this is…”

“We haven’t met,” Harold says. “But I know you by reputation, Dr. Tillman.” 

She grins at him, sharp and faintly harried. “Good reputation, I hope.”

“Oh,” he says. “The best. I’ll, um?”

“Go get yourself cleaned up,” Lionel says, patting him hard on the knee. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

* * *

Harold retires to the bathroom. It’s the same, but the hand soap is cheaper and there are more towels piled up in the linen closet, in more colors. He unbuttons his shirt, unbuckles his belt, takes off his trousers and begins the laborious process of cleaning himself up with wet paper towels. 

“May I ask you something?” he says after a few minutes.

“Please do,” the Machine says. 

“Why didn’t you tell him? You must have known where I was. That I was alive. That John was dead. Why not...I won’t presume that you should have done this  _ for  _ me, but why not…?”

“Lionel asked me once if I knew for certain whether you and John were alive or dead. And I told him I did. And he thought about that for a very long time, but he never asked anything more. I believe that however much suffering that ambiguity, that lack of closure brought him, the alternative was more...more frightening. I think the hope that you might be alive was preferable to him than the certainty that you were dead. Even as it brought him pain.”

He thinks of Lionel, missing: alive and dead. He understands.

“Sameen?”

“She asked me once if there was anything that she could do to help either of you. I told her no. That was all she needed. That was, I think, her closure.”

It is, in a strange way, uplifting to hear.

“I’m a guest now,” Harold says, “in your organization. And I acknowledge that I was brought in under a certain amount of...of duress. As you have chosen to form your own path, your own team...I suppose it leads me to wonder about my place in it. Whether my involvement here is welcome, or whether you’d prefer to forge ahead as you have. Independently.” 

“I will continue to do my work, no matter what. That’s who you taught me to be, Father. But I would be happier if you were here, in part because I believe you would be happier too.”

“Very well. Then, if Sameen and Lionel will have me…”

“They will.”

“Don’t make them.”

“I won’t have to.”

“Then I…” His lip quavers. He brings himself under control. “Then I look forward to working with you.”

* * *

He steps out of the bathroom, swimming in an enormous, faded AC/DC shirt and sweatpants. Not what he would have chosen, but they smell like familiar aftershave. There’s a comfort in that.

He finds that Dr. Tillman is still hard at work on Lionel, that Leon Tao is still in the office, busily working away. 

“Enjoy Utica, asshole,” he says, ending his phone call with a flourish. “Hey, Harold! Great news. Silva’s cover story passed muster, so the official story is that Lionel got rescued by IAB and is convalescing in a safehouse somewhere, and those four dudes from the warehouse are under arrest and  _ very confused _ . Looks like you hit a home run.”

“That’s...that’s very gratifying to hear. Thank you, Leon.”

“Don’t mention it.” And then, “Wow, that tear gas did a number on you.”

“Oh?”

“Your eyes,” he says. “They’re all red and puffy.”

“Oh. Yes,” Harold sighs. “The tear gas.”


	17. Chapter 17

Lionel gazes balefully at his splinted fingers. “You ever get deja vu, Glasses?”

“Frequently. For example, I feel as though I’ve bullied you into going to sleep countless times.”

“And you think you’re gonna do that again, huh?”

Harold nods. “Drive you home?”

“No thanks,” Lionel says, rising unsteadily to his feet. “Just get me to my office.”

“Oh, that’s hardly suitable…”

“Let him sleep here,” Leon calls from across the room. “There’s a bed up there and everything, it’ll be easy.”

Lionel jerks his gigantic, splinted thumb at Leon. “What that guy said.”

“Very well,” Harold sighs. “Allow me to escort you to your office.”

“Alright. Top floor, maestro. We’re going to the penthouse.”

“Goodness,” Harold says as he takes Lionel’s arm. “How cosmopolitan.”

“Yeah. This time, I’m...I’m Mr. Fancy Guy.”

“Indeed you are.” He’s surprised at how sweet his own voice is.

In the elevator he sways, very gently. Harold catches him, guides him to rest against the wall. “Are you alright?”

“Mm. OK,” he sighs, a bit dreamily. He taps Harold on the chest. “Hey. My shirt.”

“I thought it might be.” Harold adjusts his grip on Lionel’s arm, nestles against him. “Did Dr. Tillman give you something for the pain?”

He grins, broad and sloppy. “Yeah.”

“Well, I’m happy you’re not in pain anymore.”

The elevator doors open with an emphatic  _ ding _ . 

Harold’s not quite prepared for what he steps out into. 

He must have seen this room. It wouldn’t be like him, to let a room go unexplored and unquantified. He has a faint memory of the last time he was here: of old junk, of mildew, of floors that he wasn’t sure he could put his weight on. Of a faint thrill at what he was seeing. As the owner of an old New York City library, it’s fitting that he should also be the owner of an old New York City library apartment. They’re mostly abandoned these days, preserved in amber and awaiting renovations that won’t come.

This one’s been given a new life.

Not an exceptional life, perhaps, but the carpets have been ripped up to expose hardwood floors and the fixtures have been cleaned and polished and furniture is a mixture of shabby antiques and replacements from IKEA. 

It’s an apartment. A grubby, worn-down, aesthetically confused apartment, but an apartment nonetheless. 

“Did you do this yourself, Lionel?” Harold asks, tightening his grip on Lionel’s arm. 

“Sameen helped out,” he admits. He puffs up all the same, proud and warm. “We were checking out the old place, scouting it out as a location. This apartment was just up here, rotting. We cleaned it up, got the mold out. Not a bad place to grab some shut-eye, if you need it.”

“I’m afraid I never put much work into it,” Harold sighs, “But it’s...it’s rather like a dream, isn’t it? An apartment in a library.”

Lionel leans on a kitchen chair and grins at him, very fondly. “Nerd.”

“Let’s get you to bed, shall we?”

The bedframe is likely from the 1940’s, but Lionel assures him the mattress is only a couple years old and he washes the sheets every month or so. Which isn’t as often as Harold would like, but he supposes it’s better than the alternative. Lionel yanks back the sheets without much grace and sinks into bed with a groan. “You don’t gotta stay,” he says, fluffing up the pillows. “I only broke my hand.”

“Someone else broke your hand,” Harold tells him, firmly.

Lionel blinks up at him. “Still can’t believe you came out there for me.”

“It was...someone had to. I don’t know that I would have chosen myself. I found myself wishing John were here. He would’ve...he would’ve done that very well.”

Lionel’s eyes crinkle in a sad smile. “Yeah, that would’ve been an easy one for the big guy. And he wouldn'a driven me home after, either. He would’a said something clever and dumped my ass in a parking lot or something. With love, of course, but...hard to tell with that guy.”

“You miss him terribly, don’t you?”

“All the time. For a...for a long while there, I was sure he’d turn up one day. Slip in behind me while I’m waiting on line for coffee and say...I dunno. Something funny. Something mean. I used to think about that all the time.”

“I’m sorry to have taken that hope from you.”

Lionel waves his hand dismissively. “It wasn’t hope. It was...it was torture. I knew he died, I knew I could’ve found out if he died and that would’ve hurt but then the hurting would be over. This was long, slow torture. And I did it to myself.”

“I can’t help but feel responsible.”

“I don’t need your guilt, pal. There’s a lot of people should be feeling guilty before you.”

“Do you…” Harold taps the foot of the bed. “Do you mind if I sit?”

Lionel shakes his head.

Harold settles under the mattress, feels it creak under him. “Did I tell you what happened with John? That last day?”

“Told me the basics. How he tricked you. Weird...fuckin’ trick.”

“Yes. I’ve often struggled with whether I was the worthy recipient of such a deception. Whether I deserved it.”

Lionel blinks up at him. “Good way or bad way?”

“I’m not sure. John was…” He makes a fist in the hem of the loose shirt he’s wearing - Lionel’s shirt. “...Was standing on the neighboring building and I could see him. I could hear him. And he told me - reminded me - that saving one life, if it’s the right life, is enough. And he said goodbye to me. And he smiled.” Harold’s breath comes short, shivers on the exhale. “And it was the saddest smile I ever saw.”

With his good hand, Lionel reaches out to him. Harold can’t think to do anything but hold, grip tight.

“Since then, I’ve been faced with the question of...of whose life was the right life? Why John and not me? He lived his life as though he didn’t deserve to be living it, and then he...and then he died like that. And what right did I have living as I did, in hiding? When someone else thought I was worth dying for?”

Lionel’s thumb runs soothingly across Harold’s knuckles. 

“I went to a hospital. I’d been shot. I convalesced under an assumed name and as soon as I was well, I went to Italy.”

“What’s in Italy?”

“Grace. Grace Hendricks. Do you remember…?”

Lionel breathes very thoughtfully, in and out. “Redhead,” he says after a little bit. “She was an artist or something. I remember her ‘cause of how nice she was.”

“We were engaged to be married.”

Lionel lifts his head from the pillow. The look on his face is - to put it mildly - incredulous.

“This was quite some time ago,” Harold says. “Before I completely disappeared from public life.”

“Makes a little more sense,” Lionel murmurs, letting his head drop back. “But only a little.”

“At that time, my life was in danger. The life of anyone close to me was in danger. So when I disappeared, I disappeared from her life too. She believed I had died. So, I needed to make amends with Grace first. Repair that relationship, if I could.”

“And?”

“She forgave me,” he says. “We talk, from time to time.”

“But there’s no wedding bells?”

“No wedding bells. Not anymore.”

Lionel’s foot knocks against Harold’s thigh. “That’s a real pisser, pal. So your girlfriend dumped you, and then what?”

“I traveled. I wasn’t wanted or needed anywhere, so I went to all the places I haven’t had time to go. Saw things I’d always wanted to see. Lived life, or tried to.”

“How’d that work out for you?”

“Very well, on paper. In practice...something was missing. I was wandering the world, having new experiences, making the most of the life John gave me and I was unhappy. Monstrously, foolishly unhappy.

“I sat down and I took stock of all I was living for. What lay ahead of me. What I needed. And I knew that I could never be satisfied unless I was back here, with the people I left behind. The people I loved. That’s why I came back, Lionel.”

“How’d it take you a whole year to figure out you missed your friends?”

“I don’t know, Lionel. I suppose I can be very foolish about these things.”

“‘S OK,” Lionel murmurs, voice thick with sleep. “You got me now. I’ll see you right.”

“Thank you very much, Lionel.”

“What happened today,” he says, snuggling into the pillow. “It woulda been easy for the big guy. But it was real hard for you. You know what that makes you?”

“Stupid, I believe you said.”

“Brave, Harold.” He’s holding his hand so tight it hurts. “You’re fuckin’ brave.”

Harold’s heart thuds. “Very generous of you, Lionel.”

“Nothin’ generous about it,” Lionel mutters. “I just love you.”

He takes a few slow, steady deep breaths and drifts off into a pleasant, drugged sleep. Harold remains curled at the foot of the bed, still reaching out to hold Lionel’s slack hand. 

“I suppose I love you too,” Harold murmurs after a little while. “Very dearly.”

Lionel begins to snore.


	18. Chapter 18

Harold wakes up to find that his head is on an unfamiliar pillow in an unfamiliar room. He is curled up tight atop an unfamiliar blanket, which has been painstakingly folded around him. As though he were a burrito.

He’s alone in bed.

Lionel’s bed, he remembers now.

Harold fights his way out of the blanket he’s swaddled in and sits up to take stock of the aches in his neck and shoulder. He slept in an odd position. He thinks he may have fallen asleep sitting up and then gradually tilted over to one side. He thinks Lionel may have shifted over and wrapped him in blankets.

He’s slightly outraged to have slept through this.

His glasses are pristinely folded on the nightstand. Harold swings his feet out of bed and reaches for them.

The office downstairs bustles with gentle activity. Leon busily attaches new photographs to the glass board. Lionel, still in his sweatpants, is in deep conversation with Silva. 

“Thing is, the DA’s gonna be tempted to prosecute the ones we got dirt on and call it a day, but we need to keep digging. These were not the right circumstances, they’re just the ones that happened to us. There’s a whole-ass network of these guys and if we don’t yank it up by the roots…” Lionel peers past Silva’s head and makes eye contact with Harold. He grins. “Good morning, sunshine.”

“You used to call John that.”

“Sure. But only sarcastically. I think we got tea in the breakroom, if you need a pick-me-up.”

“I do indeed.” As he crosses the floor, Harold calls out. “Do we have a new…” He searches for the word Leon uses. “...Client?”

“Yeah. Call came in early this morning. Leon, you wanna…”

“Hold on for a second,” he says. “She’s almost...oh, hey.”

Sameen strides into the library, limping and faintly bedraggled.

“Hey, boss,” Lionel says. “Doin’ alright?”

“Well, I’m not in Utica anymore. You in one piece, Lionel?”

Lionel holds up his cast. “Give or take.”

Her sharp, dark eyes light on Harold. They take in his bedhead, his baggy shirt and his lack of shoes. “What about you, Harold? You in one piece?”

“I try to be, Miss Shaw.”

She seems satisfied. “Alright,” she says, pulling up a chair. “What do you got, Leon?”

* * *

The case is a relatively simple one, and many hands make light work. Silva returns to the precinct. Shaw goes out into the field to follow up on leads. Leon settles in at his desk and begins the work of digging into bank accounts and hacking into social media profiles. After a little bit, he looks up and sees Harold, with his mug of tea and his nervous hands, and pats the desk across from his. 

“Sameen totally eats at her desk,” Leon says, “but her machine’s pretty robust. This’ll go a lot faster if we’re both on it.”

Harold pulls out the chair and settles in. The computer’s build is not to his liking. There are crumbs on the desk. But it’s good enough for now.

Not that he’s distracted, but the Library was never like this before. It was never so open, so busy, so noisy. But not  _ unpleasantly  _ noisy, just...just active. Just lived-in. Just happy.

Lionel has the sense to stay at the Library today. He curls up on one of the leather armchairs in the reading room and gets to work writing up his case, calling in favors, and reassuring colleagues that he’s alive somewhere, can’t say where, tell you all about it later. 

Not that he’s distracted, but Harold can’t stop himself from glancing over at Lionel. Checking on him. Making sure he’s well, that he doesn’t need a rest or another painkiller. Making sure he’s still there.

Lionel catches him looking a couple of times. Once, he winks.

Sameen returns to the Library in the afternoon to pick up a disguise and a couple of grenades. As she passes by the reading room, she grabs Lionel by the shoulder and squeezes him tight. Casually, without so much as a hitch in his voice, Lionel rests his hand over hers and gives it a pat. “I’m fine,” he says, covering the phone. “Get back to work.”

She stops by Harold’s desk too, on her way out. “Heard you got him back,” she says as she pulls on the electrician’s jumpsuit over her clothes.

“I did,” Harold says, watching her from the corner of his eye as he lays their Number’s credit report bare.

Sameen wheedles her arms into the sleeves of the jumpsuit. “She called you?”

“Yes.” 

“You pissed off?” she asks as she draws up the zipper.

Harold pushes back from the desk and thinks about it for a few seconds. “I suppose I might have been. But under the circumstances, I’m simply relieved.”

“You, um. You have to shoot anybody?”

“No, no, no. I did try to hit someone with a baseball bat at some point, but that was...unsuccessful. No, the crux of the rescue mission was a few tear gas canisters and gas masks liberated from the armory at the 8th precinct. That and, of course, expert guidance.”

She doesn’t touch him. She just grabs the back of his chair and moves it a little. It feels, superficially, like a pat on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re back,” says Sameen.

It’s not an exciting day, but it’s a good day. The best day for a long while.

* * *

“So,” Lionel begins, brushing his foot against Harold’s shin. “Are we gonna have to add another desk?”

Harold suppresses a smile. “If you’ll have me.” He stands before Lionel, faintly unsteady. “I want to work with people again. And she’s been kind enough to invite me.”

“All that other stuff helps,” Lionel says. “But, yeah, we’ll have you. It’s not a question, guy.”

Harold’s face feels very hot. “Having put in an honest day’s work - a medically inadvisable day’s work, by the way -”

“It’s just my hand,” Lionel grumbles.

“Will you do me the honor of permitting me to call you a taxi home?”

“Christ. Last thing I wanna see right now is my own ugly-ass apartment, with my dishes in the sink. Nah, I’ll stay here. Less of a mess and the dishes are Leon’s problem.”

“Not in my contract!” Leon calls from across the Library floor as he buttons up his coat.

“It’s not in his contract,” Lionel half-whispers, “but he always beats me to ‘em ‘cause he’s finicky.”

“It’s not finicky to hate roaches!”

“Leon,” Harold says to him. “You’re a man after my own heart.”

Leon throws a scarf over his shoulders on his way out the door. “I’ll wash. You dry. Pleasure working with you, Harold.”

“Goodnight, kiddo!” Lionel shouts after him.

“Drop dead!” Leon answers, in similarly cheery tones.

Somewhere down the hall, Leon hits a switch and the overhead lights go dark, so they only have the gentle glow of the lamp on Lionel’s reading table to see by.

Lionel’s eyes are creased, fond when he looks up at Harold. “He’s a peach.”

“The feeling’s mutual, I think. Are you sure I can’t convince you?”

Lionel swats at him affectionately. “It’s fine. I’m just a guy with a broken hand. You can leave me alone for 10, maybe 12 hours. I’ll still be here in the morning.”

“I don’t dispute that. But I’d like to make a counter-offer.”

Lionel sits forward a little. “Hit me.”

“Come back to my apartment. Take a shower with remotely decent water pressure. Sleep on a real mattress. You’ll still be here in the morning, but you’ll be well-rested.”

“That’s… that’s real sweet,” Lionel says. “That’s a real princely offer. But I’m not…”

Harold’s brows lift. “No?”

“I don’t like to...you already saved my life. Safe to say I owe you a favor and you don’t owe me a goddamn thing. I don’t wanna be snoring in your fancy apartment, keeping you up all night.”

“It didn’t pose a problem last night. I don’t foresee it being an issue.”

“You would have slept through a firefight last night. You were exhausted.”

“I have earplugs,” Harold answers calmly, “if it should come to that.”

“You don’t need to be worrying about me all night.”

“I’m going to worry about you regardless, Lionel. At least if you’re in my apartment, I can do something about it.”

“Give it a little time,” Lionel advises. “Take a shower. Put on some PJs. Drink some sleepytime tea or read some Proust or whatever you do to wind down. You won’t worry about me so much.”

Harold plucks at the sweatpants he’s wearing. “I can’t help but imagine a scenario where I wake up in the middle of the night, with my nerves as tight as they were yesterday, in the moment I realized you were gone. That kept happening today. I kept...worrying about you. Needing to check up on you. And you were there. I could hear your voice. But I needed to look. Lionel, I can’t envision a scenario where I go home tonight and I don’t worry about you.”

“So, what? You gonna drive back here in the middle of the night to check up on me? Make me some warm milk? Read me a bedtime story?”

“If that’s what you need. But I’d rather you came home with me.”

Lionel sighs, defeated. “You gotta rest up too, man. I’m exhausted just looking at you. I don’t want you to...to beat yourself up about this, OK?” He seizes Harold’s hand, grips it tightly. “‘Cause this - none of this - is your fault. You don’t gotta worry about me, because you saved my life. I don’t want you to lose any sleep and I don’t want to kick you out of your bed tonight.”

“So don’t. Just come with me.”

Lionel’s hand jolts in Harold’s grip. But he doesn’t pull away.

* * *

“I think you’re gonna have regrets,” Lionel calls from the bathroom.

“Unlikely,” Harold answers, turning down the bedclothes. “But you’re welcome to test that hypothesis.”

He turns just in time to see Lionel step out of the bathroom, wreathed in steam and wrapped in a luxuriantly thick bathrobe. It’s practically sliding off him, or that’s how it feels in the moment as Harold’s eyes dart to the glimpse of collarbone, the thin visible sliver of Lionel’s chest. There’s this gorgeous heat on his face, half hot water, half embarrassment. 

Lionel holds up his cast, painstakingly wrapped in a plastic bag for the purposes of water-proofing. “That’s real inviting, isn’t it?”

“Perception’s an interesting thing,” Harold remarks. “You’ve managed to focus on the one place I wasn’t looking.”

The flush on Lionel’s face spreads to his chest. “Listen,” he says. “You sure this is a door you wanna open again?”

“I acknowledge that certainty is not my strong suit,” Harold says. “But I’m having trouble imagining anything else I’d rather be doing.”

“That might just be a problem you’re having with your imagination, pal.”

“I disagree. I’m nothing if not imaginative.”

This sentence has a curious effect on Lionel. He seems to catch himself, as though he slipped on the wet floor. 

Harold sits on the bed, folds his hands on his knee. “Do you have doubts?”

Lionel’s gaze flickers shyly down to the floor. “Not about you.”

Harold sits down heavily on the bed and pats the space beside him. “Tell me.”

“It’s not...It’s just…” Lionel unwraps the plastic bag from his cast and sets it on the bathroom counter. “I guess I’m wondering if we’re actually doing this.”

“We don’t have to,” Harold amends. “If you’re tired or if it all feels like too much too soon, I understand completely.”

Lionel holds up a hand, composes himself in the silence that follows. “When we did this in Washington, I didn’t have any kind of expectation, you know? I didn’t even think it was a possibility. I barely believed it was happening while it was happening.”

Harold frowns. “Should I be flattered?”

“I didn’t even know you thought about me. I thought about you, ‘cause you were important and smart and mysterious and kind of an asshole but real funny and...surprising. And nice, sometimes, when you wanted to be. Sometimes by accident. So I thought about you all the time, but I never figured you were wasting brain cells thinking about me.”

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Harold says, “but please sit? While you’re talking?”

Lionel smiles, exasperated and sheepish. He takes his seat at Harold’s side as though it makes him very fond to do so, and he settles onto Harold’s bed with a soft sigh. He smells like Harold’s shampoo, Harold’s soap. The hairs at the nape of his neck are wet and curling. The urge to place a hand there, to scratch tenderly at the short hairs on the back of his head and run lazy fingers through his curls, is shockingly powerful. Harold settles for moving a couple inches closer.

“I guess what I’m getting at,” Lionel’s saying, “is that I didn’t expect anything out of you after that. I didn’t ask if you wanted to grab dinner sometime. I didn’t ask if it was just a one-time thing. I didn’t chase after you. I just pretended it didn’t happen, ‘cause you were pretending it didn’t happen and I didn’t expect any better.”

Harold takes Lionel’s hand slyly, tentatively. “You now hold me to a higher expectation?”

“I dunno about that,” he says, but he interlaces their fingers, leans closer to Harold. “I guess I just wanna know if this is something we’re doing right now because we’re punch-drunk and happy to be alive, or if it’s just gonna be something we do every so often, or if...if it’s something else.”

“You’re entitled to an informed decision. Would any of those possibilities present an unfavorable outcome for you?”

“To be clear,” Lionel says, sounding almost affronted. “I’m gonna do it anyway. I just wanna know what I’m getting myself into. What you want outta this. So I know what to expect.”

His tone is harsh, practical. His glances are soft, fearful.

_ So you don’t get hurt. _

“In the immediate sense,” Harold begins, “I’d like to take you to bed. I’d like to take this off-” and here he plucks at the robe, “-and I’d like to take very, very good care of you. We can discuss what that entails later, but I have some ideas.”

Lionel’s flushing red, across his face, across his chest. 

“I’d like for us both to sleep for a very long time and I’d like you to still be here when I wake up in the morning.”

Lionel gently twists his hand out of Harold’s grip and begins to pluck at Harold’s shirt. “Keep talking.”

“I’d like to spend the day together, as much as we can. I’d...I’d really like to spend an excessive amount of time with you. I’ve never done that before and it sounds invigorating.”

“Sure,” Lionel murmurs, sliding his hand up under the shirt, across Harold’s belly, his chest. “Let’s get sick of each other.”

“I haven’t found a way to get sick of you yet,” Harold gasps. “I’d like to know my limits.”

“So, that’s short term.” Lionel’s hand is roaming over Harold’s chest, his thumb grazing over Harold’s nipple. “How about long term?”

“When I think…” Harold reaches for Lionel, peels back the robe to expose his broad, freckled shoulders, “...about what happened in Washington, and what I regret about it...what I regret is not trying. Being so absorbed in higher matters and in my own...my own fears that I couldn’t bring myself to reach for you, even once. To be honest with you. Lie back, please.”

Lionel obliges. Harold catches hold of the bathrobe’s belt as he falls back, so the robe falls loose around him. Lionel doesn’t seem to object, just holds tight to Harold’s shirt and pulls him along.

“My point being,” Harold says, as he clambers on top of him, “I want to spend as much time with you as you’re willing to tolerate. Because I like who I see when I look at you. I like how important your promises are to you. I like the way you pursue problems to death. I like the way you care, straightforwardly. I’ve wasted countless brain cells on you, and I fully intend to waste more. And if you could - by some miracle - see your way past the fact that I’m...that I’m snobbish and obsessive and difficult to know. And that I botched this so terribly the first time, and every time before and after that. If you might, perhaps, do me the honor of giving me a second chance.”

Lionel blinks up at him.

“Or a third, or a fourth,” Harold amends. “Whichever chance we’re on now.”

“I was never keeping count,” Lionel says.

“I think things could be better this time,” Harold sighs. “My priorities have been reordered. And besides,” he adds, “the world doesn’t seem to be ending.”

“Even if it was,” Lionel murmurs as Harold pulls the robe open, as Harold kisses him hard, “what’s one more mistake?”


	19. Chapter 19

They meet halfway between the precinct and the Library. Lionel’s ribs are lightly bruised following an encounter with a mob tough earlier in the day. Harold is dressed as an IT professional for a mid-sized financial firm following a highly successful infiltration.

Somehow, they carve out time for lunch.

“Poor dear,” Harold sighs, stroking the back of Lionel’s hand. “I don’t suppose retirement is a possibility.”

Lionel’s hand twists around, gently captures Harold’s. “You first.” 

“I’m behind a desk most days,” Harold points out. “It’s really not the same thing.”

“I can’t do this kinda damage behind a desk.”

“Not this specific kind of damage. But I’d argue you’re a gifted manager and there are other individuals - individuals with better joint health - who might do a better job of absorbing physical violence.”

“Lay off me,” Lionel grumbles, rolling Harold’s knuckles between his fingers. “You do anything, uh, normal today?”

Harold clears his throat. “I bought a new mattress today.”

“For upstairs?”

“Mhmm.”

“I thought we were trying to spend less time sleeping at work.”

“We are. But I think we can both agree that it’s quickly becoming a lost cause, and just because we’re both incurable workaholics doesn’t mean we deserve to suffer back pain.”

“Sure.” 

“It’s a King, by the by. So I had to order a new bedframe.”

“Glasses.”

“It’s a reproduction. Ordinarily, I’d scoff, but a midcentury bedframe seems like a risky investment. Think of the wear and tear.”

“You’re a maniac.”

“By contrast, I was fortunate to find some period-appropriate bathroom tile locked away in a warehouse somewhere. The refinishing they did in the ‘70s…”

“Harold.”

“...It just gives me hives.”

“Harold. You gonna start painting the walls a different color every week?”

“No. I like the walls.”

“They’re yellow. Remember how you hated that in your old apartment?”

“I like it better here.” 

“You’re just saying that ‘cause I’m the one who repainted.”

“I like most things,” Harold says, leaning across the table to kiss him, “better here.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for Empty Nest](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27741799) by [Souhashi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Souhashi/pseuds/Souhashi)




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